


The Edge of the Summer

by AstridContraMundum



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Episode: s03e01 Ride, Episode: s03e03 Prey, Episode: s04e02 Canticle, Multi, Post-Neverland AU, Thursday is a concerned father, Unintentional drug use, With a shot of, and The Great Gatsby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2020-07-12 19:37:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 104,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19951729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: According to the bulletin, the suspects were headed south, towards Dover, presumably to catch the ferry to France.But Thursday did not read their descriptions.He had met Joss Bixby before, after all.And he was certain he would recognize Endeavour Morse anywhere.





	1. Watch

Summer 1967

The trees passed by outside the Jag’s windows in a steady procession of shadow and green, giving Thursday the impression that he was not only hurtling through the woods, but through time itself.

In the seat beside him, Jakes took a wide, sweeping curve as they drove on, further into the darkness of the forest canopy. 

During those first few weeks that Thursday had been back on the job—after he had gotten out of hospital—it had seemed odd, glancing over and seeing Jakes’ deep-set eyes looking solemnly through the windscreen, rather than Morse’s wide blue ones.

But then, with time, he had gotten used to it, just as he had gotten used to the new, sharp pain in his chest, one much too near the heart to do much about.

Other than wait.

And trust to hope.

When Thursday had first met Endeavour Morse, he had been sitting at a desk, poring over Mary Tremlett’s poetry books, his face lit under a bright cast of white light from the desk lamp. Now, he was becoming a mere memory, falling back into the past, like the shadows of the trees streaming fast behind him.

It had been four months since Morse had disappeared, but a newspaper, folded open to the crossword, still sat on his desk. Mr. Bright hadn’t the heart to throw it out. No one did.

It was as if they were waiting for him to come back and solve the puzzle.

Even through that seemed less likely with every passing day.

“Where are we headed?” Thursday asked.

“About twelve miles out. Lake Silence.”

“Hmmmm,” Thursday hummed.

There was something in the air around Lake Silence that summer. Or else, something in the water.

The stately collection of palatial manor houses which lay grouped around the broad lake had long been home to some of Oxfordshire’s most prominent families: the Donns, the Belboroughs, the Mortmaignes—a quiet refuge for the wealthy, a place thoroughly buttoned-up and staid—certainly not the sort of neighborhood to which the police were habitually called.

But times were changing, Thursday supposed—the sons and daughters of many of the old families, who had all been “up” together, seemed to have traded in their fathers’ games of pheasant shoots and their mothers’ of garden teas for increasingly extravagant parties, a trend that had grown like a wildfire, rather like something out of control, with the arrival of Lake Silence’s newest residents.

Two of the lake’s original families—through gambling and idleness and dissipation—had lost their ancestral seats in the past few years and had been replaced by upstarts of sorts, men who liked to make a splash and who had plenty of money to burn.

The Buchannans had lost Maplewick Hall back in ‘63, and for years it stood empty, until it was claimed by a pop band, the Wildwood, a group aptly named for the changes they brought to the woods surrounding Lake Silence—wild parties and noise complaints, at least one drug raid, and a young man found dead, overdosed, out under the trees, staring wide-eyed up into the sky.

The other vacant house, at the opposite end of the lake, had also recently been bought up—by the owner of an import-export firm, ostensibly.

Joss Bixby, it seemed, was also madly fond of parties, although his affairs were of a slightly different tenor, drawing a slightly different, slightly older crowd—although there was some overlap, amidst the core group of Lake Silence’s twenty-somethings, who seemed to drift back and forth between both sets.

To the young, a party was a party, Thursday supposed. 

While the Wildwood’s parties were all strobe lights and psychedelic rock music, strings of beads and rum and Cokes and pot, Bixby’s affairs were awash with evening suits and ball gowns, jazz bands and champagne, fairy lights around the pool.

From the outside, Bixby’s parties looked to be the more respectable, but Thursday wasn’t so sure.

When Thursday had gone out to Maplewick Hall on a drug raid, Ken Wilding had been openly hostile. “What do the pigs want now?” he snapped. “It’s a free country.”

By contrast, when he had gone out to Bixby’s after an unending series of noise complaints that uniform couldn’t seem to handle, Thursday had found Joss Bixby to be silkily cooperative, smiling bemusedly as he offered him a Scotch. It was just a chuckle between friends, especially as the guest Bixby had been talking with at Thursday’s approach, Tony Donn, was the son of the neighbors who had filed the bulk of the complaints.

“I’ll take care of it, old man,” he said.

Just that easy.

All on the up and up.

Or so it seemed.

Because some of the men that Thursday spotted at Bixby’s elegant lakeside gala made the Wildwood’s crowd look like a Sunday school picnic. Harry Rose and Meyer Wolfsheim laughing over at the roulette wheel. George McKinnon cradling a scotch and chatting up a girl young enough to be his daughter.

Crooks and criminals one and all.

Thursday had made a mental note to keep an eye on the place.

********

Jakes pulled up into a small clearing, where WPC Trewlove stood waiting with a young girl, her long, straight blonde hair draping either side of her face like twin gold curtains. 

“Cassie Wilkins, sir,” Trewlove said, once they had gotten out of the car and made their way over to where the two stood, at the edge of an embankment. “She thinks a boy might have drowned here, last night.”

“Name?” Thursday asked.

“Ricky Parker,” the girl said.

“Was he a college boy?” Thursday asked.

“Town, I think,” she replied. “I only met him last night, at a party. At Maplewick Hall.”

“So,” Jakes said, “What happened, then? When was the last time you saw him?”

“We came down to the lake, for a swim,” the girl said. “I thought he was coming in with me, but ... he never did. By the time I got back to the bank, he was gone.”

“Did you look for him?” Jakes asked.

“Yes,” she said. “But it was dark. I had run off, just as a lark, you know, as a bit of a joke—told him he should try to catch me. I thought perhaps he simply lost me in the trees, that he went back to the party. But then, this morning . . . no one there said they ever saw him come back.”

And they were all too high to have noticed, one way or the other, last night, Thursday supplied in his head.

“And this is where you left him?” Thursday asked.

“Yes. I mean, I think so. I ... I just wonder whether he might have come in after me and, I don’t know, got into difficulty.”

Thursday nodded.

Wouldn’t be surprising. He had seen more than one person drown while under the influence of drink or drugs over the course of his career. 

Just then, DS Strange emerged through the trees.

“Sir,” he said. 

And at once, Thursday understood. He had found the body.

He and Jakes began to head toward him, and the girl, too, began to follow, but Strange held up his hand, his expression softening.

“You had better just stay here, for now, Miss,” he said gently.

The girl swallowed and nodded. She, too, understood. Trewlove put her arm around her thin shoulders.

Thursday and Jakes went on, following Strange through the tall grasses and then along a pebbled beach, along the edge of the water.

Suddenly, Strange stopped short at a place where two uniformed officers and a man with a gray beard stood gathered, even though there was not a trace of Ricky Parker’s remains in sight.

Then, Thursday saw it: there was no body, no . . . . but there was ... something.

It took a moment for his mind to make sense of it, but there, in the dark lake, a single pale forearm was floating in the water, bobbing slightly with the pull of the tide. 

“So. Where is the rest of him?” Thursday asked grimly.

“God knows,” the man with the trim gray beard said.

Thursday looked at him, a crease between his brows.

“Dr. Kemp, Home Office pathologist,” the man said, by way of introduction.

“We usually see Dr. DeBryn,” Jakes said.

“Fly fishing on the Tay, I believe. He was to be in today to resume his duties, but, he seems to have extended his holiday. So. Here I am. Covering for him,” the man said, with an air of irritation.

Kemp stood a few feet back from the edge of the lake and looked down at the floating limb. “Well. Drowned, most likely. Drinking, was he? At one of these bashes out here? Most likely stumbled out of his depth. Boat comes through, propeller hits the body, takes the arm off.”

“Are you sure?” Jakes asked. “His girlfriend thinks he went in along the shore closer to Maplewick Hall. Hard to see how the arm would have washed up here.”

“Well, she’s mistaken, clearly. It was a drowning and a boating accident, and that’s what it will say in my report.”

Kemp went about his business, then—packing up his field kit without so much as a by-your-leave.

Thursday watched him darkly, feeling troubled. It didn’t sit right.

It was with a sense of relief that he looked up to see Dr. DeBryn, walking crisply through the trees, still wearing a dark brown cardigan, as if had, indeed, just gotten home from holiday.

“Spot of car trouble,” DeBryn said. “Sorry to be late.”

“I’ve taken care of it, DeBryn,” Kemp said. “Simple drowning. Vicitm’s got himself hit by a boat propeller.”

“Oh. Kemp,” DeBryn replied. “No one told me that you had come out. Someone must have gotten their wires crossed. Well, as I’m here, there’s no harm in my taking a look.”

He looked about then, as if for a corpse, and then, catching sight of the arm, blinked in surprise behind his heavy-framed glasses.

“Did you think to get the arm out of the water?" DeBryn asked, turning to Kemp. "Rather difficult to examine, from this distance, isn’t it?” 

Kemp scowled.

DeBryn placed his bag on the slope of a fallen fir tree and pulled out a pair of high gloves. Then, he went over to the water’s edge and moved the arm higher up, to where the water met the pebbles and sand. For a few long moments, he was quiet, thoughtful. 

“The remains appear to be those of a well-nourished male in his early twenties” he said. “Left arm severed below the elbow, with flesh at the trauma site torn . . . and the humerus shattered through.”

He paused for another long moment and looked up. 

“This was no boat propeller. If I didn’t know better, I’d have to say these injuries accord with the bite of a large mammal of the order carnivore. Most likely of family _felidae,_ genus _panthera_.”

“A big cat? Oh, for the love of God,” Kemp said.

“I’m not saying that’s what it _is_. I’m saying that’s what it _looks_ like. There’s a difference,” DeBryn replied.

“I’ll have no part in this,” Kemp announced. “You always were a fool, DeBryn.” 

The man huffed off. Thursday was not sorry to see him go. He wasn’t sure about any tigers, but whatever had so torn Ricky Parker’s arm was certainly no boat propellor.

Once Kemp had disappeared through the clearing, Thursday turned back to DeBryn. “So. You were saying, doctor?”

****** 

Morse woke up amidst a pile of garish silk pillows, multicolored, with fringed tassels and embroidered Asian motifs. The sun was streaming through the open windows of the garden pavilion, the white sheer curtains billowing softly, magnifying the light.

Slowly, he sat up, smoothing back his hair, settling it into place. The awakening day was quiet, and the last of the partygoers were still asleep. Empty bottles lay strewn about on a small table, along with candle ends and a pair of red women’s shoes.

In one corner, a girl sat as if in a daze, murmuring softly to herself. Emma, was it? Or Ella? She was stoned on something, that much was clear. Morse gave her a wide berth; he found some of Nick’s friends’ experiments unnerving. As for himself, he stuck to Scotch.

“Don’t you want to explore your mind?” Nick so often asked, and Morse’s reply was always the same.

“No. Not particularly.”

Morse had come over to the pavilion with them after the party not because he had _wanted_ to espescially, but because he didn’t want to be alone.

But he didn’t fit in with them, not really. He loathed their music for one. And, for another, well ... It was hard to believe that they were all just his age, when he felt so much older.

His “enchanted place,” Nick called the pavilion, as if it was something esoteric, something almost gnostic, but the name reminded Morse of nothing so much as a phrase right out of _Winnie_ _the_ _Pooh_.

It was as if they were just a group of Christopher Robins, who had gone out along the lake for a game of Pooh Sticks and had taken rather a bad turn. 

Morse had to admit, he did find some of the things Nick spoke of alluring, despite himself.

Infinite possibility.

Infinite love.

But in many ways, they were all children still. They simply wanted to be happy.

And Morse did not believe in happiness. Not really.

Nor did Morse fit in with his old friends, the ones who had brought him out to Lake Silence. They had moved on ahead of him: while he had been sent down, joined the army, made a hash of his so-called career in the police, they had been learning the market, taking over their fathers’ companies.

Even Bruce, who once shamelessly plagiarized an old paper of his, one he had found in his rooms, was now the head of the East India Shipping Company.

While what was Morse? Nothing and less than nothing.

It was hard to believe they were all just his age, when he felt so much younger. They had given up on happiness, but were all beginning to pursue the next best thing: stability.

But Morse did not believe in stability. Not really.

Morse crossed the room and found his tie amidst the burnt ends of candles. He put it on and tied it, straightening the knot.

It was little things like this that kept the edges sharp, the blurriness at bay. Wake up when it’s light. Tie your tie. Chop wood for the fire.

He stepped into his shoes and went out the French doors, out into the day.

That was how he lived now.

When he wanted to go somewhere, he went. And when he found he didn’t want to be there anymore, he left.

He took one of the row boats from the shore of Nick’s small island over to the main shore. And then he disappeared off into the woods and started walking.

Morse liked the woods, by and large. The woods didn’t judge him.

But sometimes, Morse felt as if he was under watch. By day the sun and by night the moon sometimes seemed to look steadily down through the branches, like the eye of a Cyclops, watching his movements, watching as he went along the path.

Sometimes, the sun and the moon were in the sky at the same time, at opposite ends of the horizon, and then they resembled the eyes of a crazed prophet, looking off into the distance in two different directions.

As if they knew all and saw all.

Sometimes, Morse felt there were other eyes in the woods, watchful eyes, eyes that bespoke of something savage, of a primal hunger.

And Morse would go still. Hardly dare to breathe.

And then the feeling would pass, and he would walk on.

He wasn’t afraid of the eyes so much as they way they made him feel.

Like they might shred him to pieces.

Like he might not mind it if they did.

Today was different, though; today, he was not under watch. Today, it was not the eyes that haunted his steps, but voices. A ripple of voices ebbing and bobbing and flowing like the water against the shore.

Some of the voices sounded familiar, warmly familiar, even, and Morse felt himself pulled in their direction, despite himself.

He knew he must look a state. He knew he should avoid people until he got the chance to get back to the lake house, check his reflection in the small mirror over the washbasin, make sure he was still _somewhat_ presentable.

But he couldn’t help but follow the voices anyway.

That was how he lived now. When he wanted to go somewhere, he went. When he didn’t want to be there anymore, he left.

He came out to the top of a clearing and looked down at the black lake, and there they were, like some tableaux created in his imagination, a collection of ghosts from his past, suddenly so vibrant, so solid, that it seemed they must be real: Thursday and Dr. DeBryn and Jakes and Strange, right there, twenty feet or so below, gathered at the edge of the water, where an odd pale log floated by the water’s edge, close to the shore.

“Morse?” the shade of Thursday said, in his low and rich rumble.

The ghosts knew him by name, and perhaps they weren’t ghosts at all, because they were looking at him in surprise, with as much surprise as Morse felt he must be looking at them.

But Morse had scarcely the time to consider this, because something was wrong, all wrong.

Morse was sure he saw it. Something on the pale log had glinted in the sun.

But logs are of wood, they do not shine, do not sparkle, do not glint in the sun.

Morse frowned and stepped closer. It was a watch. The pale log was wearing a watch.

And then, the placement of the watch helped to make sense of the shape, and then the shape snapped into focus.

It was an arm.

A severed piece of a white arm bobbing, alone there, in the shallow of the dark lake.

The nauseating sound of the contaminated water slopping heavily against the sand made his stomach clench, made his blood run as cold as the sickly water of the lake. He felt as if he was falling away, and it was all wrong, and then the grass was rising to meet him, and the world went black.


	2. Spin

Thursday did not hear the sound of footfalls; he saw only the faintest murmur of movement in the tall grasses out of the corner of his eye.

He looked up to see a man who looked like nothing so much as a young postgraduate student—seemingly out of place in the midst of the trees so near to the grounds of Maplewick Hall: black trousers, crisp white shirt, matching burgundy jumper and tie—the only nod toward Bohemianism was his red-gold hair, which was curling wildly in the late morning light.

For the briefest flash of a moment, Thursday hadn’t recognized him; it was as if he had looked for Morse among the faces on the pavement for so long that, when confronted by him in the middle of nowhere, completely out of context, he couldn’t quite make sense of what he was seeing.

The lad stood stock still, as if stunned; it was clear that he, too, was struggling with the shock of simply happening upon them in the middle of the woods, completely out of the blue.

“Morse?” Thursday asked, tentatively.

Morse’s eyes fastened on him for a moment, as if he was trying to place him, and then they drifted over to the severed arm, which was moving slightly in the ripple of water, right where the lake met the shore.

A slight frown settled over his features, and then Thursday could see it— the moment the realization hit. Slowly, the lad’s face drained of all color, and then he looked just as he had at Mary Tremlett’s autopsy, when Dr. DeBryn had peeled back the young girl’s scalp from her skull. 

Morse’s eyes fluttered closed and his head tipped back, and then the rest of him followed, collapsing into the grass into an awkward pile of limbs, just as he had slumped down onto the mortuary floor, all those years ago.

Only this time, Thursday was not there to catch him.

Thursday made his way to the top of the embankment in three or four strides, but there was no cause for real concern; he could see at once that Morse was all right. His face was peaceful, as if he was sleeping, looking much younger and softer than it did when Morse was awake and alert. Morse’s face was so often flickering with expression—a twist of the mouth, a furrow of his brow, a sharp jerk of his chin—that it was strange, almost, seeing him in such complete repose.

Thursday tapped him gently on the cheek and found that his cheekbones were much sharper than he remembered.

“Morse?” he prompted. “Morse?”

“Best to let the fellow have a little rest,” DeBryn said, crouching on the other side of Morse’s supine form. “It must have come as quite a shock, what with him not being steeled for such a sight. He’s always had a tendency toward necrophobia.”

“Hmmm,” Thursday agreed.

It _was_ a fairly incongruous sight—a severed arm right in the midst of an otherwise perfectly bucolic scene. Like one of those paintings of watches melting, or of giant eyeballs looking out of the trunks of trees.

But yet, there was something disturbing there, in Morse’s form, that bespoke of a greater cause for concern—the new sharpness of the cheekbones, the shallowness of his breathing, the rise and fall of his chest, a chest that seemed somehow more hollow than it once had, the ribs more fragile under the deceptively thick jumper.

Thursday frowned. He had seen more and more cases just like this in recent years, young men and women hooked on drugs, wasting away.

Not to mention the fact that Morse reeked of pot. Just like some of those lads he had known in the desert, who were silly with the stuff. For some of them, it just wasn’t enough. In a few months or so they were on to opium and god only knew what else, chasing greater and greater highs and crashing all the lower.

“You don’t think . . .” Thursday began, before settling on the single word, “Drugs?”

DeBryn had carefully shed his gloves—a fact which would have made Morse grateful, had he any idea what was happening—and lifted Morse’s wrist, checking his pulse. 

“Low blood pressure,” DeBryn said. “He looks as if he’s lost a bit of weight.”

DeBryn moved then to lift one of Morse’s eyelids. Thursday wasn’t quite sure what it was he was looking for, but, afterwards, the doctor sat back on his haunches, as though satisfied.

“I’d say it’s most likely he simply passed out. Much like he did at that first autopsy, just a few years ago.”

Jakes, in the meanwhile, was looking annoyed. “The question is, what the hell is he doing out here at all?”

Strange cast him a worried glance, as if alarmed at being asked to venture any opinion as to what Morse might or might not do.

Thursday looked back to Morse, who was still lying there before them, his eyes gently closed. Despite the doctor’s reassurances, Thursday began to feel uneasy. Morse had always been such a private man. There was no universe in which he would appreciate being scrutinized by the four of them while he lay sprawled amongst the leaves and grass, utterly out to lunch.

“Morse?” Thursday asked again. He put a hand to his forehead, pushing some of the wild spirals of hair back from his face.

As soon as he did so, Thursday feared he might startle Morse, that Morse might flinch from the unexpected touch, but, instead, he seemed unconsciously to lean into it, as if seeking some scraps or reassurance, and Thursday felt his throat tighten.

He had failed the lad worse than he had imagined.

Just then, Morse took a deeper, shuddering breath and his big eyes slid open. He blinked rapidly, a line forming between his brows in confusion, as he stared at the underside of the leaves of the trees above. Then, his eyes settled, resting on him.

“Sir?” he asked, faintly.

“You’re all right, Morse,” he said. “You’ve just passed out.”

Morse seemed to take a few seconds to process this.

“Oh,” he breathed.

After a few long moments of silence, Morse struggled to sit up, and Thursday placed a supporting hand under his shoulder, helping him upright.

“Sorry,” Morse murmured. “I just thought I saw. . .” He shook his head, gently, from side to side. “Never mind.”

“You did see it,” DeBryn said. 

“What?” Morse asked, breathlessly.

“You did see it, Morse,” DeBryn said. “Hence, here I am.”

Morse went white at that, but Thursday supposed it was better to tell the lad the truth than to allow him to think that he was going mad, having visions of severed limbs in the lake. 

“What happened? What happened to him? That man?” Morse asked.

Jakes looked at him impassively. “The doctor thinks it was a tiger,” he said.

Morse’s eyes flashed with a twinge of annoyance and then dimmed, dismissively, as if he was beyond the point where Jakes might hope to get a rise out of him. 

“Morse?” DeBryn asked. “When is the last time you had something to eat?”

Morse blinked as if the question posed by the doctor was an exceedingly difficult one. In the past, Thursday had seen Morse rattle off lines from obscure, nineteenth-century operas, but now, when asked a simple question of a personal nature, he seemed to draw a complete blank.

Thursday huffed with impatience and pulled a sandwich out of his pocket, handing him half.

“I don’t want to take your . . .” Morse began.

“Just take it, Morse,” he barked, “that’s an order.”

Morse took it in his hand and looked at it for a long moment.

“Cheese and pickle,” he said, softly. “It’s Monday.”

Jakes snorted and shook his head, looking up into the trees as if hoping they might grant him patience. He looked back at Morse, then, who was taking bite out of tentative bite of the sandwich, the color slowly returning to his face.

“What are you doing out here?’ Jakes asked, shortly, at last.

“What?” Morse asked.

“I said, ‘What are you doing out in the woods in the middle of effing nowhere?” He enunciated each word carefully, as if Morse was perhaps a bit slow on the uptake.

Morse scowled. “I live here,” he said.

“In the woods?”

“No. Of course not. I’m staying at a lake house.”

“What have you been up to? You act as if you don’t know what day it is. You smell like a goddamned Moroccan hashish shop.”

Morse laughed, lowly and scornfully. “Anyone who stepped _foot_ in that party would smell like that. The air is thick with it.”

“What party?” Jakes snapped.

“The one at Maplewick Hall.”

“What were you doing at such a party? I wouldn’t think that would be your scene.”

“It’s not,” Morse said, simply. “Not really. I don’t stay long. I just duck in for a bit and go out into the garden. Or out to the pavilion.”

“Duck in for a bit, eh? For what?” 

Morse looked away.

It didn’t take a Detective Sergeant or a Detective Inspector to figure out what would lure Morse to such a party. He just ‘ducked in’ all right. Long enough for a reload on his glass and then off he went. He had that same drawn look he had when he had come back from Whitney, when Thursday had gone ‘round his, only to find empty Scotch bottles all over the place.

Only this time, Thursday had not been there to catch him.

“A glass of Scotch?” Jakes taunted. “Or two? Or the whole damn bottle? Or two? And then what? Stumble off to this so-called lake house? Where’s that, exactly? You holed up in some shack behind that waste case pop band’s house? Over at that chancer Bixby’s?”

“No, I’ve never even been to Bixby’s,” Morse said, haughtily.

“Why not? The hooch there isn’t good enough for you? I would think it would be better.”

“No,” Morse said, stiffly. “I don’t have a mask.”

Thursday frowned. He had often seen them wearing masquerade masks when he had been there, over to Bixby’s—but whether Morse spoke literally or figuratively was impossible to tell.

One might say that that in itself was Morse’s tragic flaw.

The lad never _had_ figured out how to wear a mask.

“So where, then? You got some tent out in the woods?” Jakes asked.

“No. I told you. It’s at a dacha at my friend’s parents’ house.”

”Who do you know who lives out here?” Jakes asked. “What ‘ _friend_?’”

“My friend Tony,” Morse replied, simply.

“Tony? Anthony Donn? You mean the goddamn earl’s son? How would the hell would a detective constable know him?”

“We were friends. When we were . . .”

“Oh, don’t tell me,” Jakes said, anger flooding, now into his voice, as, with a flash of a silver lighter, he lit up a cigarette. “I think I can guess. You only told me once. Every effing week. When you were “up.” Am I right?”

“I told you _once_ ,” Morse said. “When you asked how I knew Alice Vexin.”

Morse paled slightly, as if he realized he was giving himself entirely away. It was then that Thursday realized that he had not intended to give them the slightest hint as to where he was staying.

What was Jakes on about?

Morse might have well wondered the same thing, because, even though it was he who was sitting on the ground, eating half a sandwich, his hair uncombed and spiraling in the sun, he frowned a bit, as if he was concerned about Jakes.

“Do you know Ricky Parker?” Jakes snapped.

“Who?”

“Ricky Parker? He was also up at that little party. Now his arm is floating around in the drink.”

Morse made a nauseated face, what little color he had regained falling away.

“No,” he said thickly. “I don’t speak to too many people. They’re horribly loud, those parties. They don’t particularly lend themselves to conversation. They’re awful things, really.”

“Yet there you were. Probably plenty of booze, I suppose up there. Pop band won’t know the good stuff from the cheap stuff, but you aren’t too choosy these days, I suppose, from the look of you.”

“Why are you behaving like this?” Morse asked.

Jakes took a cool and steady drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke into the air in a slow stream. “Because. I would have thought you might have come back. You look like you could use a job. What are you doing out here? Sitting around feeling sorry for yourself?”

“Sorry for myself?” Morse asked, wonderingly.

“That’s right. Look at you. Look at the state of you. Yes. It’s Monday, Morse. A workday. You shouldn’t need a sandwich to tell you that. If you had an ounce of self-respect, you’d be coming in for your shift. Not sitting out here getting pissed off your arse. What good do you think that’s doing anybody?”

Morse sat up all the straighter, looking outraged. “Who are you to talk?” he cried. “You wouldn’t . . . .”

And then, Morse stopped short and his eyes flew wide, as if he understood something.

“Say it,” Jakes snapped. 

“No,” Morse said.

“I said say it, Constable. You know you want to.”

“Say _what_?” DeBryn asked, airily, watching the exchange with his typical mild interest.

But Morse ignored him, his big eyes trained solely on Jakes.

“No,” Morse said. “I don’t. You’re _pushing_ me to say it.”

Anger, then, propelled Morse clumsily to his feet, leaving Thursday and DeBryn to back out of the way, as Morse floundered and stood.

“I’m not going to let you use me as a tool for your bloody machoism,” Morse said. 

“ _My_ machoism?” Jakes replied. “Last time I looked, Morse, I wasn’t the one trolling around in the woods like some rough sleeper. Life is there to be getting on with. Time to stop boo-hooing and get back to work.”

“I know what you want me to do,” Morse said. “You want to twist that knife a little further, is that it. Why? Does that make you feel better?” Morse mimed the movement of a spiraling knife. “Twist, twist. Is that your game?”

“You bastard,” Jakes said.

“Well guess what? Not one bit of it was your fault.”

“No. It was all of it yours, am I right?” Jakes asked. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?“

But Morse was already backing away.

“I’m leaving. I’m leaving,” Morse said, his voice quiet again, but shaking. “I don’t have to talk to you. I don’t owe you one thing. I don’t owe anyone anything. It’s none of your business, what I do.”

He turned, then, on the spot, and stalked off into the darkness of the trees—and he didn’t look back.

“Morse!” Thursday called.

“That’s right. Run away, college boy!” Jakes shouted after him.

Thursday felt certain that last was meant to goad the lad into turning around. But it didn’t work. Morse kept right on walking.

Once Morse had gone, Thursday turned to Jakes and said, quietly, “So. Do you want to tell me what in the hell that was all about?”

A muscle in Jakes’ taut jaw jumped, but he said nothing.

Thursday cast a glance to the trees. It was odd that Morse would allow Jakes to have the last word; it was so out of keeping with what he knew of Morse, that Thursday felt utterly adrift, at a loss as to how to even begin to reach the lad. It wasn’t at all like the stroppy constable he knew, to let an argument end without him being the one to end it.

Thursday had put a hand to his face to rub his tired eyes, when, suddenly, he heard a rustle in the trees.

He looked up to see Morse, standing there at the entrance of the treeline, his face as pale and as fierce as a benediction.

“You can say what you want,” he said, his voice low again, and steady. “But know this. None of it was your fault. It just wasn’t.”

He waved a hand to Strange. “You don’t see Strange fussed about it, do you? What’s done is done. That’s just how it goes.”

And then he disappeared again, the only difference being that Strange now looked as stricken as Jakes looked angry.

Christ.

Only Morse could sow so much discord in the space of five minutes.

Thursday sighed.

Something had happened between his officers on the night of Blenheim Vale.

Thursday didn’t know the details, but it didn’t take a genius to figure it out.

Thursday had gone out to Blenheim Vale alone; he knew it was a trap. But he went all the same, for the boy, for Tommy Cork.

It was his choice, his alone. He wouldn’t ask any of his subordinates to come along with him; damned if he’d be the one to order them to their deaths.

But Morse had come that night, despite all. Surprised Thursday so much that he was a hair’s breadth from shooting him on the spot, once he had heard the movement in the shadows. Thank god, he realized in time that it was Morse, come to join him, and managed to raise his drawn gun to the ceiling.

Despite all, Morse had come to stand alongside him. And Jakes and Strange had not. 

Thursday shook his head, as if to shake the thought away.

“Why did you have to antagonize Morse like that? Did it not occur to you that I might want to speak with him?” Thursday asked.

Jakes snorted lightly. “Well. You’ll be able to talk to him all you want, now that you know where he’s living. Did you see his face, when I goaded him into letting that bit slip? Right angry with himself, he was. He wasn’t going to tell us at all, the little bastard.”

Thursday nodded.

“All right, sergeant,” he said.

At the moment, it was as close as he could manage to saying ‘Thank you.’”

He would have to remember, when he returned to the station, to call Win, to tell her he'd be late coming home that night. 

*****

By the time Morse made it halfway to the lake house, he had stopped shaking. He’d get home, he’d have a drink, he’d put the morning behind him.

It would all be as if it were only a bad dream.

But as he came out to the path to his gray cottage on the shore of the lake, he stopped in surprise. A robin’s egg blue limousine was parked outside, and a chauffeur, in a black cap and uniform, was standing solemnly by his door with a silver tray.

Morse approached the man with caution, in the same manner in which one might approach a mirage.

He was frightened of all the odd things he had been hearing and seeing. A disembodied arm, the ghosts of his past, and talk of tigers, and now this, this incongruous scene set in his humble, gray woods . . .. it was enough to make him think that perhaps Nick had slipped him something after all, as he had so often assured him that he would someday.

He knew it, he knew he should have steered clear of the whole place, that Maplewick Hall was dangerous, but like a moth to a flame, he couldn’t stay away.

“You should try it,” Nick would say. “One day, I’ll slip some in your glass, and you’ll see. Your mind is a kaleidoscope— full of all of the colors you can’t even begin to imagine. When you see them, then you’ll understand. You’ll thank me.”

And Morse would recoil. He’d stand to leave, tell himself he wouldn’t allow himself to be tempted back.

And Nick would say, “To escape the boundaries of the finite mind, to step completely out of yourself, to step beyond the door—it’s freedom like you’ve never known. And I’ll go with you. You won’t be alone, Pagan.”

And Morse would remain where he was.

“Mr. Morse?” the chauffeur asked.

And the ghost knew him, just as the ones did by the lake—the specters of Thursday and Jakes and Strange and DeBryn.

“Yes,” Morse replied, as if uncertain as to whether or not he wanted to own the name.

“Mr. Bixby asked me to deliver this to you. Personally.”

On the tray were a heavy envelope and a black masquerade mask. He picked them up and held them in his hands. A part of him wanted to toss the items away, onto the ground—even so simple a gift, even a letter, felt like a tie that might bind him.

If someone sent you a letter, were you not obligated to answer it?

But instead, Morse nodded politely.

“Thank you,” he said. 

The man nodded and got back into the fantastical car, while Morse stood and watched. It wasn’t until he drove away through the trees that Morse opened the envelope. Inside was a piece of heavy writing paper, with a few lines handwritten in bold black script.

_Dear Mr. Morse,_

_The pleasure would be entirely mine if you would do me the honor of attending a little party I’m throwing tonight._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Joss Bixby_

Morse looked at the paper for a long moment, not sure what to make of it. He had been under the impression, from Tony and Bruce and Georgina and Kay, that one wasn’t invited to Bixby’s parties. One simply went.

Morse didn’t understand; what would such a man, who by all accounts had everything, want with him, a former police officer, a onetime cop killer, a ghost living in a shack? 

Morse stepped into the house long enough to toss the invitation and the mask onto a table and then went back outside.

He rolled up his sleeves, tucked his tie in between the buttons of his shirt, and picked up the axe that stood by the door. The axe was heavy, the smooth wood of the handle sun-warmed; here at last was something real, something with a weight and a heat he could feel in his hands.

He walked over to where a large log lay by the woodpile, raised the axe, and swung it down with a satisfying surge of force. It always cleared his head, chopping wood. There wasn’t anything much simpler, was there? Keep moving, keep warm, keep alive.

The coolness of the night could numb him better than the Scotch ever could, but, it transpired, he did have a survival instinct, after all.

Just like any other animal in a cage.

He had been chopping wood for nearly half an hour when heard it, the sound a car engine, rumbling through the woods.

Could it be? Two cars in one day? Was there no place safe? Was there no place in which to hide?

At this rate, he’d have to move away from here, too.

Soon, he could hear the car drawing closer, and then he could see it, too, moving like a cool shadow through the trees: a gleaming Egyptian blue automobile, its cream top folded down, its immense silver grill flashing in the sun like fire through the branches. Morse eyed it with suspicion.

But, as the car pulled nearer, Morse could see the driver was Tony. The tension in his shoulders eased, but, still, he found himself watching, warily.

Tony pulled up and stopped the car, just a few feet outside of the cottage, and stepped out of the car smartly, with a bit of a bounce in his step. He was certainly proud of the thing.

“Oh,” Morse said, glumly, as Tony came to stand before him. “I didn’t know who it was.”

“Nice to see you, too, Pagan,” Tony replied, undaunted by Morse’s weak welcome. He stood then, beside the car, practically beaming, and it was clear he was waiting for some further comment.

“What do you call that?” Morse asked, at last.

“Bluebell,” he said proudly. “What do you think?”

It was then that Morse noticed that one of the automobile’s wide staring headlights had been struck out, turning it into a watching Cyclops.

“What happened there?” he asked.

Tony frowned for a moment, and bent to look. Then he sprung back up again, like a clockwork toy. “Bloody pheasant,” he said. “I thought I had missed it.”

Morse felt his stomach churn.

Et, tu, Tony?

Yes, even Tony. By far the best of the lot of them.

Oh, he _thought_ he had missed it. But did he stop, did he at least slow down, did he make certain the poor creature had a fighting chance to cut across the path in the woods, that were, after all, its home?

No. He had swung the wheel, tried to dodge it, but the bird in its panic had probably darted back the wrong way again, and thus met its grisly death, crushed against the unrelenting hide of a manmade predator.

They were all predators. They all had it in them. There was no place to hide from the fact.

“What’s the matter?” Tony asked, and he titled his head, as pert as a small bird himself. As if he was something utterly harmless. 

And he was. 

Mason Gull had been wrong all those years ago. He was nothing so very special. They were all predators. And they were all prey, too.

“Nothing,” Morse said.

“Come on. Let’s go for a spin," Tony said. "I thought it might take you out of yourself for a little while.”

“Out of myself?” Morse murmured, more to himself than to Tony.

“That’s right,” Tony said.

“Where?” Morse asked, suspiciously. 

“It’s a surprise,” Tony said.

Morse paused and considered him. Then he leaned the axe up against the side of the gray clapboard cottage.

“All right,” Morse said, at last. “But if you see any more pheasants, I want you to stop.”

Tony laughed. “How funny you are.”

********

It was strange, being in the car. He hadn’t been in one for months. You get in, it takes you along. Takes you along somewhere, whether you are actually going somewhere or not.

The wind blew in his face as the enormous vehicle bobbed along the road, and it felt good actually, good to be alive.

“Just as a matter of interest, what are you going to do with yourself?” Tony asked. “Do you have any plans yet, at all?”

And Morse should have known it would be some sort of a trap. Now that he was locked into this machine, he could not leave if he wanted to go.

Or he could. He could pop the lock and roll right out of the car, into a bed of leaves. 

But Tony of all people, Morse supposed, had a right to ask, seeing as he was squatting, essentially, on his parents’ property.

What was he going to do with himself?

It was Monday. It was a work day, just as Jakes had said. Somewhere, far from here, people were wiping tables, and balancing books and typing letters, with a clack and a ring. People were performing surgery, driving buses, giving lectures on Homer and stacking cans in a pyramid display at the grocer’s shop; people were standing at cash registers and in performance halls, and it was all enough to make your head spin.

Morse did not know what he should do with himself.

But he knew he could not do any of that.

“I don’t know,” Morse said, watching the trees float past.

And for the briefest of instances, Tony’s carefree face grew tight.

Soon, they were streaming across the endless lawn that led to Kay and Bruce’s. He might have known that Tony would bring him up here.

He knew they often got together, his old friends from Oxford. But Morse had avoided them, chiefly. Looking back, he found, was worse than looking ahead. The past was filled with swirl and sound and static and confusion and spin—the future was as smooth and as gray and as still as the lake at his door.

But they were nearly there now, so Morse might as well go along with it.

It wasn’t worth a fight.

That’s just how it goes.

As they approached the house, they came upon Bruce, driving from out of the trees, riding a tall Arabian horse. He brought the horse to a trot alongside of them.

“What do you call that?” Bruce called, with a laugh.

“Bluebell,” Tony said.

It seemed odd that he and Bruce should ask Tony the same question. Morse had thought that they asked different questions. He had thought that was why his life had ended up the way it had.

He didn’t know how to ask the right question.

Bruce snorted. “A hundred quid says I’ll beat you back to the house,” and then he was out on the path ahead, galloping fiercely before them.

Even the swag of his riding clothes could not conceal the power held in Bruce Belborough’s body, as he crouched low over the back of the horse. He was a large man, with the air of the athlete who had peaked at twenty-one and had already begun to go slightly to seed. His movements were clumsy and quick, and when he spoke, he projected his voice as if he were an actor who wanted to be sure that even those in the cheapest seats in the house could hear his every word.

He could be cruel, at times, and Morse found himself having less and less patience, less tolerance for him, as the years passed. Despite this—or perhaps, perversely, because of this—Morse always had the impression that Bruce valued his good opinion, that he wanted him to think well of him.

God only knew why. But there it was. 

  
Once they had reached the house, Bruce flew off the back of the Arabian with one easy swing.

He handed the reigns off to a waiting stableman and sauntered over to where he and Tony were getting out of the car.

“Pagan!” he shouted, with a ferocity that quite made Morse’s head spin. He slapped him soundly on the back. “What have you been doing with yourself?”

“This and that,” Morse said.

“And not much of the other, am I right?" he boomed. "Kay’s been angry with you, you know, that you haven’t been by,” he added, keeping his hand tight on his shoulder, leading him into the house as Tony followed.

It wasn’t until they were in the wide foyer that Bruce released him from his viselike grip.

“The girls are right through there,” he said. “Get yourself a drink. We’ll join you in a minute. But first, I must talk business with Tony.”

He looped a hand around Tony’s shoulder and they went off toward Bruce’s study, which Morse knew had once been his father’s study, in the days that Morse was Pagan, in the days when Morse knew this house as well as his own rooms at Lonsdale. 

********

In the drawing room, the windows were thrown wide, allowing the white sheer curtains to billow in on the wind like sails, like clouds, like hope, like all the things that might buoy Morse away from where he was.

So far did the curtains extend into the room—turning the space into a swirl of cirrus skies—that, for a moment, all else was obscured. He did not see that Kay and Georgina were sitting on a white sofa in the sun-bright room until Kay sat up and turned around and called to him. 

“Pagan!” she cried. “You're here. I’m paralyzed with happiness!”

She reached a long and slender arm out toward him, waggling her fingers, one large diamond on her left hand glinting hard in the light, beckoning for him to join them.

She moved to the side of the sofa as he walked in, and Georgina mirrored her action, draping one long golden arm languidly over the rest on the other side, making a space between them.

Kay patted the place they had made, then, and Morse fell against the cushions, already more tired from the day than he would have imagined.

Morse closed his eyes for a moment, and, when he opened them, his gaze fell on the small oval table before them, on which sat two glasses and five or six bottles of pastel and neon bright liqueurs—sapphire blue and lemon yellow and pink and gold—the only spots of color in the whirr of white. It was only then that Morse noticed how Kay and George moved about on the deep sofa as though they were bobbing about, adrift on the ocean. They both had been drinking, and fairly heavily.

It might well be that Morse was the soberest amongst them.

“Here,” Kay said, twisting about and reaching for an extra glass from the table behind her, “You have to try this ginger one.”

She sat the glass smartly before her and began to pour from a honey-gold bottle, one shaped like a cylinder of a hexagon.

“Pagan doesn’t want to drink that,” Georgina protested.

“Of course, he’ll try it,” Kay said.

And why not, Morse thought, seeing as it had already been poured?

Morse tipped his head back and drank—it was a hot day, and the ginger liqueur was sweet with a hint of spice, and it was cold . . . and it must have been the sugar in it because it seemed to go straight to his head.

It was nice, really.

“Why haven’t you come by these past few weeks? Whenever I have stopped at your cottage, you’re not home,” Kay said, with a very un-Kay like pout.

“I don’t know. I don’t stay there, much,” Morse said.

“Well. You’re here now. My perfect rose,” she said. She leaned forward, catching Georgina’s gaze. “Isn’t Pagan just like a rose?”

Georgina raised one darkly penciled brow.

And who could blame her?

Morse was certainly nothing at all like a rose.

It was odd, the change, the flip in their personalities. When they were up, Kay had been so earnest, so serious about her studies; she had been a scholarship student, like he was, and in many ways, she was his closest friend. When they went to Tony’s aunt’s house in the country, or to galas or garden parties, they tended to stick together, watching each other for clues as to how to address a duke, or as to which fork to use when presented with five of them lining down from a white china plate.

George, on the other hand, had been outgoing and brash, a bit of an artist, keen on photography. She had a horror of simply earning her degree and marrying a boy of her circle; her parents had sent her to Oxford as a sort of finishing school, and Georgina never missed a chance to rebel against their well-laid plans.

But Morse, too, had been different in those days, hadn’t he? An idealist, he had been, brimming with hope, convinced that he had been delivered onto some sort of promised land—to the city of dreaming spires, to a place far, far, from his father and Gwen.

And then, almost despite themselves, they had—all three of them—fallen in love.

Susan had left Morse for another man before they had even reached the altar; Bruce had left Kay for a series of other women as soon as they had walked away from it.

Harsh as those fates may seem, Georgina’s had been all the crueler. She had married James amidst the pomp and circumstance requisite for her class; like Kay and Bruce’s, it had been a fairy tale wedding.

And two days later, James was dead, killed in a boating accident, on their honeymoon.

In the following years, Kay came to glow brighter and brighter, like a star burning up all of its energy. And perhaps it _did_ consume a lot of energy, after all, keeping up the pretense, living a lie. Bruce told her that he loved her again and again. And then he left her, again and again and again.

Georgina, by contrast, grew more subdued, seemed to fade, as if some shadow had fallen over her.

And Morse? He too had changed. Grew more isolated, insulated... hesitant to trust his heart to love again. It was better, safer, surer, to put all of his hope, all of his passion, all of his fierce loyalty, into the abstractions.

Justice. Fairness. Truth.

These could not betray you.

Or so Morse had thought.

_“It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,_ ” the conventional wisdom ran.

But the three of them, all in all, were prime examples that that simply was not the case.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” Kay asked. “You still aren’t going over to Maplewick Hall, are you? Those parties are awful. Bruce and George and I went over last week, and we had to leave. It was hellish. People being sick all over the place, people talking to the wall.”

“Bruce enjoyed himself, I’d say,” George said. “Got involved in some argument about Marxism with a little hippie from Lady Mathilda’s.”

And then he disappeared with her, Morse supplied in his head. But he certainly didn't want to say it to Kay. 

Morse knew all too well Bruce had been there before, at Maplewick Hall. He had seen Bruce there more than once, along with a few other powerful and wealthy young men, shed of their ties and jackets, talking to girls who weren’t as old as the bottles of Scotch on their desks back home. 

“Why do you go out there, Pagan?” Kay asked, a hint of admonishment in her voice.

“For the Scotch, in the main,” Morse said.

But that wasn’t quite true.

It was a lie.

Since when had he become a liar?

He had been a student and a fiancé and a signals man and a police officer—so many things.

But a liar had been the one thing he was not.

“Well,” Kay said. “I don’t want you to go over there anymore. I want you to come with us to Bixby’s. Now _there_ is a party.”

Morse looked at her, sharply. “Who _is_ Bixby, exactly?” he asked. 

“Why, everyone knows Bixby,” Georgina said.

Morse mulled this over; it was certainly an answer that was no answer. 

“I suppose I might go,” Morse said, finally. “His chauffeur drove out to the lake house and gave me an invitation.”

"An _invitation_?" Georgina asked, her perfect dark brows rising in cool surprise. "No one receives an _invitation_ to Bixby’s parties." 

"Of course, Pagan received an invitation," Kay said. "He's a perfect rose."

She picked up another bottle. 

"Here," she said. "Try the blue. The blue is orange." 

Georgina laughed. 

"You know what I mean," Kay amended. "It's flavored like oranges. Like sun-kissed and happy climes far, far away." 

She laughed as the poured the drink, but it wasn't her old laugh. It was something brittle, like glass about to break. 

“Let’s go," Kay said, sitting up a bit straighter. "To Bixby's. Let’s all of us go. Let's turn back the clock. Let’s just go and be happy.”

Georgina took a long sip of her drink. “I think I’ve forgotten how.”

“You can’t say that,” Kay said.

“You can't bring back the past, Kay," Morse said. 

It seemed an honest enough thing to say, but for some reason, Kay narrowed her eyes at him. And then George’s eyes welled with tears, and she turned away.

Then, abruptly, Georgina stood up and stretched, reaching her arms high over her head.

“I’ve been lying on that couch for so long that it feels like forever,” she said.

"That's just what I'm saying. We all need a change. It will be like old times, won’t it?" Kay asked, brightly. "Before everything turned so . . ." 

But what it turned to Kay didn’t say.

“Let’s go and sit in the garden,” George said, already moving through the billow of curtains, to the summer-lit French doors. "I want to clear my head. I think I might have had a bit too much to drink."

*********

They sat on the steps of the Italian marble patio, on a long flight of steps that led into a rose garden. The garden and distant trees were parted by a lane of green lawn that afforded a grand view of the lake, where the sun sank, hovering on the horizon.

In those last minutes, as it bobbed near the edge of the water, the sun went liquid, lighting up the lane like a golden corridor; in that odd slant of dying light, Kay and George turned to gold, too, so that they seemed to be glowing, and Morse couldn’t help but wonder if he had also been transformed by this strange, midsummer alchemy.

“Look at the sun,” George said wonderingly, breathlessly, and he and Kay both understood what she meant.

They all knew, after all, not to look _directly_ at it: the liquid gold of it was too fierce, too bright—it made you close your eyes hard against it. They knew not to look to the sun, but to the effect that it cast, one too beautiful to be believed—it was as if the three of them together had fallen into the same dream.

A dream tangible enough to get lost in.

To get lost in. 

It was strange to think, that as lost as he felt—as much as he realized that he had fallen into an endless spin—he was perhaps closer to the truth of things than either Kay or Georgina.

But how to tell them?

It was a lie that he told them, when he said he didn’t know why he went out to Maplewick Hall.

Nick Wilding might be just as lost, just as bewildered, just as misguided as the rest of those who dwelt at Lake Silence, but at least he knew what it was that he wanted, what it was that he was looking for.

What it was that could, indeed, make him happy.

“ _We’re all just angels who fell from grace. We all want the same thing.”_

_“Infinite possibility.”_

_“Infinite love.”_

In that magic falling and golden light, it occurred to Morse that Nick, with his shining intensity and his fevered, gas-blue eyes, might possibly, though, be mistaken. Not in his goal, but rather in the path he had taken to find it. 

Perhaps, Morse thought, infinite love was something both a hundred times more miraculous and a hundred times simpler than Nick had realized.

Perhaps it had nothing to do with the music of the spheres, with reading paperback translations of Sanskrit texts, with searching through drug-induced revelations for some kernel of truth. 

Perhaps it was not even remotely sexual, as Nick so seemed to think: perhaps it had nothing to do with the way their bodies pressed together, seeking contact, seeking understanding, seeking some sort of meaning that went beyond the skin.

Morse had spent so many nights now amidst those ridiculous silk pillows and sandalwood-scented candles. As their clothes were shed, so were the differences between them: naked in the dark, Morse and Nick were no longer a former police officer and a pop star, but only two young men, all gawky arms and legs and unkempt hair, each with bright blue eyes that searched the other's, finding only his own confusion reflected back to him. 

And in the blue morning, the same cool loneliness.

But perhaps that wasn’t at all surprising. Sex comes with its own set of wishes and desires and half-spoken demands, after all.

It occurred to Morse, sitting in the light of the dying sun, that infinite love was something beyond even that. It was at once the most wondrous thing, the one thing in all of the busy, desperate, grasping world that sought nothing for itself, only the well-being of the other. 

And, at the same time, it was something remarkably modest, unassuming, uncomplicated.

Infinite love was not to be found in incense and esoteric poetry or in the vibrations of the universe, or even in a sweat-slicked embrace amongst soft satin pillows—but rather in the warm hand on your shoulder that steadies you, that sets you straight when the world is spinning out of control on its axis.

It could be that infinite love did not carry with it the scent of musk and crushed roses, but rather of something earthy and commonplace, like worn wool and tobacco.

Perhaps it might not taste of wine-stained mouths and ecstasy, but of something—incredibly enough—unbelievably mundane.

Perhaps even something as unremarkable as .... cheese and pickle.


	3. Lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of a long chapter. . . .but I really wanted to set up the Morse/Bixby and especially the Morse/Nick Wilding to see how that would go! :D

The party at Bixby’s was a bit like falling into a fireworks display; crowds of men in evening suits and women in jewel-toned gowns drank and danced and called out to one another amongst a shimmer of roving colored lights—rose and aqua green and neon blue.

A full orchestra played in the pit, sending out bright gold notes amidst the flash of brass trumpets, followed by the fiery sunset sounds of the saxophone. And every now and then, a musician tore away from the others, veering off into a breath-catching crescendo.

Kay threaded her hand through his as soon as they made their way through the crowds and into the ballroom. It was a palace of a place, glowing with white balloons that shone like moons in the dimmed light, and glittering with strings of crystal beads that fell from the ceiling like falling stars.

“Dance with me, Pagan,” Kay said, pulling him through the crowd. And the next thing Morse knew, Tony, Georgina and Bruce were falling away behind them.

She stopped when she reached the center of the floor; the couples around them were so wrapped up in one another, that, oddly enough, it felt as if they were quite alone, even though they were in the center of the ballroom, merging into the very heart of the party.

As they embraced, the band started up a new song, fading into the low blue flame of a slow number, and Kay rested her head—crowned with white flowers—heavily on his shoulder.

They swayed together, turning on the spot. Morse wasn’t much of a dancer, but luckily, the tempo was familiar: as slow and as dreamlike as the ripple of water on the lake outside his door.

But as he revolved in the center of the polished floor, Morse came to feel a prickle at the back of his neck—as if, just as in the woods, there were eyes here, watching him.

He raised his face from where it rested on the top of Kay’s bowed head and saw Bruce on the edge of the dance floor, narrowing his eyes through the slits of his black mask, as he raised a glass of Scotch to his lips.

Morse frowned.

It wasn’t like Bruce to show any jealousy of their friendship, his and Kay’s.

As often as Bruce had once tweaked him for his middle-class background, he just as often noted, “It isn’t bad, having someone with good old-fashioned English values in the set. There has to be _someone_ you can trust not to steal your girl.”

Morse watched Bruce for a moment, perplexed. But then he realized he wasn’t looking at them, after all, he and Kay—but rather off into the distance, at some spot over their shoulders.

Who was it he was watching so?

Morse was tempted to turn and look, but then, as if she knew that Morse had been thinking about her husband, Kay raised her head and murmured, “Bruce is having an affair. With a bus conductress, of all things.”

She laughed then, a little wildly. “Room for one more on top.”

Morse frowned again. It wasn’t like the Kay he knew—the cavalier laugh, the forced little double entendre.

But, as to the affair, Morse knew all about it already, probably more than Kay did.

The last few times Morse had seen him at Maplewick Hall, Bruce had been with the same woman—not as young as the ones he usually went in for, but flamboyant and gregarious, with bright red hair and brighter red lipstick, fitted out in psychedelic minidresses more jarring than the notes Nick’s brother Ken struck up on his electric guitar.

But Morse didn’t want to tell Kay anything of this.

She had discovered long ago, he supposed, that Bruce was not what she thought he was.

Who was he to add fuel to the flames of her complete and thorough disillusionment?

Morse shook his head gently, as if to chase the thought away. Yet, still, he felt uneasy; still, he felt a tingle at his nape.

He glanced up again, over Kay’s shoulder, and looked out over the crowds. He located Bruce once again, on the side of the dance floor, his eyes still watchful, and—as Morse revolved in a slow circle, holding Kay—he followed the direction of Bruce’s gaze.

And then he saw him—the object of Bruce’s scrutiny, the man who had made Morse to feel as though he was being watched.

Morse studied his features, trying to place him, taking in the smooth dark hair that gleamed blue in the lowlights, the dark eyes that trailed Kay’s swaying figure with a hopeless and definite longing.

Suddenly the man seemed to realize that he, the watcher, was, in turn, being watched. And the dark eyes slid over from Kay to Morse.

For a moment, as their gazes met, Morse felt an odd ripple, an odd sense of recognition that seemed to twist somewhere in his gut. For all that the man cut a suave figure at a glittering party, he, too, was accustomed to being alone, to being locked somewhere inside himself. 

Morse held the man’s gaze for what felt like a long time, determined not to be the first to look away.

But he found he couldn’t help it. Soon, he dropped his eyes, focusing on a spot somewhere near Kay’s ear, where tendrils of gold hair glimmered in soft curls framing her face.

And when Morse raised his eyes again, the man was gone.

But it was no matter.

Kay had the right idea; like this, revolving in circles, he could almost believe they were two hands of a single clock, winding backwards.

Back to a time before everything went so badly wrong.

***************

Once the music stopped, Kay threaded her hand through his once again, leading him off the floor and through a labyrinth of rooms, deep gold and lemon yellow, until they found Tony and Georgina, in a dim drawing room, one infused with the red glow of party lights.

George was whirling around the room with a pocket-sized movie camera, holding the mechanical eye over one of her real ones and moving about with an odd sort of fluidity, as if she herself had become a swiveling camera stand.

“The say he has a man flies around, scouring the palaces of princes and maharajahs,” she said, with a voice bright with champagne.

“The loot of the world,” Morse agreed.

“Can you Imagine? He must be rich as Croesus,” Georgina said.

“Little wonder, considering . . . .” Tony began.

“Considering what?” Kay asked.

“I heard he’s a descendant of some Prussian prince. That they have more money than the Hapsburgs ever did,” Tony said, with a smile of satisfaction. 

A couple standing nearby had overheard them, evidently, because they turned to them, their faces bright with interest.

“I heard he got it all selling state secrets. That he’s really a double agent,” said the young man.

His girlfriend shook her head. “I heard he’s a real gangster. I heard that he _killed_ a man,” she said, breathlessly.

She sounded a little thrilled by the idea. Morse stifled the urge to wince.

“I heard that one was well,” Tony said, laughing.

“I don’t believe he’s any of those things,” Kay said.

“Why not?” Tony asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, airily. “I just don’t think any of that’s true, that’s all."

“Hang on,” Georgina said, abruptly, looking through the door behind them. “Where’s Bruce?”

“He’s at the tables, of course,” Kay said, a little wistfully.

And then she smiled.

“Come on" she said. "Let’s have another dance.”

*******

After a few dances, Bruce cut in, his face a dark cloud that seemed out of keeping with the firework frivolity of the night.

He must have lost quite a bit at cards, Morse supposed. 

And then, not half an hour later, he and Kay left. It seemed odd, that they would go so early, when it was Kay who had cajoled them all into coming.

The three of their set remaining—he, Tony and Georgina, slipped outside into the relative peace of the shadowed garden, making their way over to a grouping of patio chairs that had been set out around the pool, a mirror of still water twinkling with the reflection of fairy lights.

George looked up into the stars, smiling softly, and—for a moment— Morse felt a brush of relief. She had seemed so despondent that afternoon, as they had sat on Kay’s sofa, and now she was casting her face up to the skies.

Possibly, with hope.

But then, she said, “You know. I think we must just be bad blood, the Mortmaignes. Rotten. Through and through.”

Morse and Tony exchanged startled glances.

Her parents _were_ odd, there was no denying that. Morse was never quite sure what to do with himself around them.

Her mother was stridently religious, to the point of heresy—she seemed not so much filled with faith as with superstition. And her father was even more perplexing—he lived for the hunt, to go on Safari; he was obsessed with the world of kill or be killed. 

There was something disturbing about a man who was so keen on it—raw nature, red in tooth and claw, to the exclusion of all else, even his wife and children.

But “bad blood?” What did that mean, exactly?

“Do you count yourself amongst that?” Morse asked

“Of course. I must be bad, mustn’t I?" Georgina replied. "I’ve been punished enough.”

And Morse’s heart fell.

Not this.

He knew what line of thought she was following, and it was not one he felt he could bear to contemplate.

“That was a tragic accident, George,” Morse said. “It wasn’t any sort of divine judgment. It’s just something that happened.”

“You don’t know,” Georgina said.

“What don’t we know?” Tony asked, cautiously. 

George shook her head of tawny hair, so that it gleamed copper in the odd light, and then turned away.

“I’m just damaged. That’s all. I’m damaged goods. When I see all of these people here, laughing, happy . . . I just wish I could be like them. Or, at least, I want to be happy, for them . . . but . . .”

Morse snorted. “I don’t see anyone here who looks _happy_ , necessarily. Merely entertained.”

But she ignored him.

“Why can’t I be happy for them?” she murmured. “I _want_ to be. . . but I’m not. All I can think of is that I was once just like them. And I still could have been, if. . . .”

She looked up at them, then, and tears were running in silent lines down her face.

“Things happen for a reason,” she concluded, simply. "I must have done _something."_

“No. No, they don’t. Things just happen,” Morse said, and his words seemed to lurch out of him, sharper and more brittle than he intended.

Things happen. It didn’t necessarily mean you had done anything to deserve it or not deserve it, and . . .

_“I didn’t do anything,” Morse said._

_“Come now, Constable Morse. How else is it, then, that your scarf came to be wrapped around Chief Constable Standish’s throat?”_

_“I don’t know. . . . I . . . . Someone else must have taken it . . . to make it look like it was me . . . ”_

_“What? What’s this? Are you suggesting someone would bother to frame you? A mere constable? It’s well known that you’ve been a malcontent on the force for some time. So. What was this? Payback? Is that it?"_

_“I didn’t do it. I didn’t. There must be some sort of mistake. . .”_

_“Do you have anyone who can attest as to where you were between the hours of eight and nine. . . ?”_

_“No. . . I . . .”_

_“No alibi. Where were you then?”_

_“I was . . . . I was. . . .at a pub.”_

_“Can anyone attest to that?”_

_“No, I . . .”_

_“Well. There you are. And all the motive in the world. And your scarf, right there . . .”_

_“I didn’t do anything,” Morse said._

_“It would be much easier if you would simply confess. Your brief could ask for leniency. You know what the sentence is, for murder.”_

Murder. Murder. They kept using that word. They said that he had murdered a man.

They said it so many times he began to wonder if it wasn’t perhaps true.

“Things just happen. Whether you will them or no," Morse said. 

It wasn’t until Tony and George looked at him that he realized he had said the last words out loud.

And now Tony was looking at him in the same way he was looking at George, vaguely patient and paternal.

It was annoying as hell. He was always so damned untouchable, Tony.

“I think we have all had enough,” Tony said.

But by 'we’ he meant, of course, he and Georgina.

Georgina closed her eyes, placing a hand to her forehead. “Yes,” she said, “I think so, too.”

Tony rose to stand. 

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go. I’ll take the both of you home.” 

“I’m not going yet,” Morse said.

Tony watched him, appraisingly. Almost . . . warily?

“Will you be all right, getting home?” he asked.

Morse scowled. Who needed it really, Tony’s condescension?

“I’m already home,” Morse replied. “It’s just through the trees, the lake house, isn’t it?”

And, abruptly, he turned and went back into the house.

But that was a mistake, too. Because now he was alone here. And didn’t want to be alone.

But he didn’t want to be with people, either.

********

Once Morse had walked through the wide French patio doors and back into the house, he headed down a long hall, distancing himself from the chatter and noise of the party, until he stumbled across a library, with shelves that seemed almost to reach sky-high, extending from the floor to the dome of the ceiling.

He went inside and meandered along the rows of books. It was all right here, dark and quiet—and yet he could still hear the fringe of music and voices from the ballroom and the Great Hall.

“I have to say, he’s done a fine job, hasn’t he?” a voice said.

Morse wheeled around, startled. Looking at him from around the edge of a tall, over-stuffed arm chair was a slight, older man with gigantic glasses— glasses that gave him the look of a thoughtful grasshopper.

“They’re all real. The books,” the man explained. “I thought they might be just for show, but they’re real. Don't look as if they've been cracked _open_ , mind you, but they’re actual books, all the same.”

The old man stood up then, stretching as he did so, as if he had been sitting for a great deal of time. 

“I’ve been drunk for a week, so I thought coming into a library might sober me up,” he explained. “And I was curious to see how far he’d taken this delightful fiction.”

“Hmmmm,” Morse said, continuing his wander about the room.

He came to pause before a painting, an elaborate still life, that stood on a lit easel.

Then, he smirked.

“Well,” Morse said. “This isn’t real.”

“No?” the old man asked.

“No,” Morse said. “It’s a fake. A copy. The real painting hangs in the Rijksmuseum. I’ve seen it.” 

Just then, through the glow of red light in the doorway, the shadow of another man appeared, trim and elegant and broad-shouldered, flipping a gold gambling chip.

“How do you know?” the shadow of a man asked. “Maybe _this_ is the real one and the one in the Rijksmuseum is a fake.”

The man came in through the door, then, moving out of the red haze and into full view, and Morse regarded him glumly.

It was the same man, the man with the unfathomable dark eyes who had been watching Kay and then watching him, out on the dance floor.

“Hmmmmm,” Morse said. “I think the curators might have noticed.”

“They might,” he said. “And then again. . .” 

He flipped the gambling chip into the air, sending it spinning into the light; then he caught it and placed it firmly in one hand. When he moved his hand away, the chip was gone, and his outstretched palm lay empty.

Morse regarded him impassively. He nodded, then, to a Roman bust that was—rather incongruously—wearing a top hat.

“Perhaps for your next trick, you can pull our host from that top hat and we can ask him,” Morse said.

“Be delighted, old man,” the man said. He took the hat off of the bust, and, with an elaborate flourish and a bow, he placed the hat on his own head. Then he swept it off again. 

“Et voila!” he said, with a triumphant smile.

Morse stood utterly still for a moment, as the purport of the man’s gesture caught up with him.

And then the man's triumphant smile melted into a warm one. 

"I’m sorry, old man. I thought you knew. I’m Bixby. My friends call me Bix."

Morse said nothing.

"Morse, isn’t it?" Bixby prompted. "Anthony said that it was.”

“You know Anthony?” Morse said, uncertainly, trying for the second time that evening to get some measure of the man.

“Oh, yes. He’s been by guest many times. Both here and in London. I’ve a place on Berkeley Square. The Belvedere. Perhaps you know it?”

“No,” Morse said.

“Ah,” Bixby said. “Well.”

Morse wasn’t sure what to make of Bixby. Were any of the things said about him true?

One thing Morse _did_ know: he didn't like the way the man stood, so stolidly and self-assured, between himself and the doorway into the hall.

“Well,” Morse said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. But please, don’t let me keep you from your other guests.”

He had started to move around the man to get to the door, when Bixby reached out and placed a broad hand on his shoulder. Morse resisted the urge to shrug it off. 

“Actually, I’ve been looking for you, old man. I wondered if you might have time for a word.”

He flicked a glance toward the man with the owlish glasses, who was scrutinizing him, wide-eyed, in shock, no doubt, at having finally uncovered the identity of the elusive Bixby.

“In private,” Bixby said.

Morse hesitated.

The uncertainty must have shown on his face, because the man smiled, even more warmly. 

“You aren’t afraid to talk to me, are you?” he asked. 

Morse raised himself to his full height.

“Of course not,” he said.

“Good,” Bixby said. “You shouldn’t believe the half of what you hear, you know.”

And from that, Morse was left to wonder if he knew, if he knew the half of what people said about him.

***************

Morse followed Bixby up a sweeping staircase and down a long hall, until the sounds of the party had disappeared entirely.

Then Bixby started up another flight of stairs, and Morse began to feel uneasy.

Where was he taking him? No one would be able to hear him all the way at the far reaches of the house.

And would Morse remember the way out of this labyrinth of a place, if he decided he wanted to go?

At the end of a final hall, Bixby stopped and opened a door for him, pausing at the side to allow Morse to go through.

Morse crossed the threshold cautiously, watching Bixby over his shoulder to be sure that he did not slam the door behind him, locking him in.

But, no, Bixby also followed, closing the door softly behind him.

Morse turned to take in the room.

And then, he froze in his tracks.

He was in the man’s private apartments, in a large bedroom, painted a deep red, filled with gilt mirrors and heavy chairs, and —in the center of the room—a wide four-poster bed, a billowing island of throw pillows and silk in a wine-dark sea of opulence.

What the hell?

What had the man brought him here for?

He was just turning to leave, when his gaze fell upon a large black-and-white portrait that hung over the bed.

It was a large portrait of Kay, blown up from a photograph of her that had been published in _Country Life_ magazine.

Morse felt his blood run cold.

Dear God, the man was an obsessive. He had seen all sorts of these sorts of sick bastards during his years in the police. He would have to warn Kay. Tell her to never come here again. 

He wheeled around and looked at Bixby.

He had expected to see a flash of something sinister mar Bixby's suave features, to see the potential psychopath under the pose, but instead, his dark eyes had followed Morse’s, taking in the picture gently, wistfully, almost sorrowfully. 

He looked, at the moment, as nothing so much as a love-struck sixteen-year-old boy, the sort that sighs in the back of class and doodles his beloved’s initials in a notebook.

And Morse hesitated.

Bixby took a deep breath, as if to inhale the night. “You smell of her perfume, you know” he mused. “It must be from when you were dancing.”

And oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. Morse was getting the hell out of here.

“I’m leaving,” Morse announced. “I’m going now.”

Bixby raised a hand in supplication. “Please,” he said. “I realize this . . . this might seem a bit odd, old man. But please. Hear me out."

But Morse kept on moving toward the door. 

"And consider, too," Bixby added, a bit breathlessly, as if he knew he had not much time in which to convince him . . "Whose idea was it for you to come tonight?”

Morse paused.

It had been Kay’s. She had rallied half the evening, trying to convince them to come. It had been almost a mania with her. 

Bixby raised his eyebrows knowingly, as if he knew that he had correctly predicted Morse’s answer.

Kay. 

Slowly, as if he understood that making any sudden movements might lead Morse to fly out the door, Bixby sauntered over to a table, where a decanter of Scotch and a set of cut-glass tumblers shone on a silver tray. 

He poured the amber liquid into two glasses and offered one to Morse, lifting it into the light. And Morse started over. 

He could tell by the bottle that the stuff was of much better quality than what he was used to drinking. 

Morse came to stand alongside of him to claim his glass, and, after he took his first sip, Bixby began to speak. 

“We met many years ago. Kay and I. In London. At the Belvedere. It was long before I owned the place. We spent the evening together. Dancing. A few drinks. And then she had to go, back to Oxford. And she took my heart with her,” Bixby said. 

“I’ll never forget her expression, as she turned to leave. As if she was looking down through a long tunnel, one that revealed to her all that might have been. And I knew, then. I knew she loved me. As fiercely as I loved her.”

“This happened ... all in one night?” Morse asked.

“Yes,” Bixby said. “I didn’t know who she was, old man. Other than her first name. Kay. But there was something. Something there. And it completely knocked me over." 

He walked over to his bedside table, opened the drawer, and pulled out a large scrapbook.

“And then, a few days later, I saw this in the paper.”

He held the book up, as if inviting Morse to come and stand beside him, so that he could look, too, at the pages. Slowly, Morse ventured over. Inside the book, was a newspaper article about Kay and Bruce’s wedding.

_Shipping Heir marries Birmingham Girl in Wedding of the Decade_

“I thought, how happy she looked. And if she was happy, I was happy. I told myself to forget” Bixby said. "But then, a few days later, I saw this."

He flipped the page in the scrapbook to another article. 

_Shipping conglomerate heir indicted on reckless driving charges_

Bixby gestured to the page. “Not a week after the wedding, and Bruce Belborough was already crashing cars, drunk, with the hotel chambermaid. No. He wasn’t good enough for her. Not good enough by half.”

“That was five years ago. If you felt so strongly about it, where have you been all of this time?” Morse asked. 

For the first time, Bixby seemed to falter, for the first time, he seemed uncertain.

"There were certain, impediments, I'm afraid . . . that . . . that prevented me from coming to Oxford, old man," he said. 

"But now, I have returned," he added, a bit grandly—and, with a dramatic wave of his hand, he strode across the room, toward a row of tall windows. 

And no wonder there were so many stories about him. No wonder people thought he was a liar. It was all so . . . theatrical. 

He stood by the windows, then, gesturing for Morse to come and look out as well. “Now I have returned, old man, to found a kingdom over which she can reign. One every bit as good as what Belborough can give her."

Once again, Morse followed, uncertainly, coming to stand beside Bixby at the window. From this height, he could see all of Lake Silence. Even Kay and Bruce’s house across the water, down to the green light that shone at the end of their dock.

And then, Morse looked down, through the trees.

And his heart leapt with a jolt. 

"You can see my house," Morse said. 

"Hmmmmmm?" Bixby asked. 

"You can see my house," Morse repeated. "Right there. Though the trees." 

Morse looked at him, then, horrified. Were these the eyes that had been watching him?

But, no. Even if Bixby _had_ seen him from this window, his were not the eyes that Morse had felt as he walked, crossing through the woods. There was a shine of benevolence in Bixby’s eyes. No sign of something savage. Not really.

"Ah, yes,” Bixby said. “It’s just there, isn’t it?”

Then he was looking at him, bemused. “Are you quite all right, old man?"

“Yes," Morse asked, uncertainly.

Bixby’s eyes were not the ones he had felt in that woods, but he had been watching, too, nevertheless. Watching them all and planning.... what, exactly?

"Why .... why are you telling me this?” Morse ventured.

“You’re an observant man. You must see the way Bruce watches her. The only time he lets up his vigil is when he’s playing cards, keeping tabs on me. We never can speak freely to one another. We’re so close, but still so far away. He’s always there. Always, always there.

Morse remained silent. He knew enough to know when someone was working their way toward asking him for something.

“Tony said she and you were great friends, when you were up. I thought you might like to help her.”

“Help _her?”_ Morse asked, incredulously.

“And me,” he conceded. “She comes by your house, you know. I see her, pulling up in a little white car. She comes every Wednesday around three, for example. Right after she’s come back from meeting friends for tennis. To visit you.”

“To _check_ on me, you mean,” Morse said, hotly.

But Bixby wasn't foolish enough to rise to the bait; he said nothing, making Morse to feel churlish, wrong-footed.

Morse turned away. “So,” he said, quietly. “What is it you want of me, exactly?”

“I thought. Well. I thought perhaps you might have me to tea, old man.”

“To _tea?”_ Morse asked. 

“We’re friends now, aren’t we? You and I? We’re neighbors, even. You could have me to tea, and perhaps I might happen to be there, when she comes by. Perhaps we might finally have the chance . . . the chance to talk.”

Morse looked at him, his face impassive.

“So. You want me to help my friend cheat on her husband. Is that it, then?”

Bixby grimaced with distaste.

“No. No. Of course not. My intentions toward Kay are completely honorable. I’m not asking her to be unfaithful to her husband. Not at all.”

“Hmmmmmm,” Morse said, doubtfully. 

“I’m asking her to leave her husband. To leave him and marry me.”

Morse snorted. “You don’t ask for much, do you?” 

Bixby looked at him, his eyes solemn. “Is your friend happy?” he asked.

Morse’s smile faded.

“No,” he said.

“No,” Bixby agreed.

For a moment neither said a word.

“It’s 1967. Don’t you think Kay deserves the chance to make that choice for herself? To at least speak to me, without her jailer of a husband looming about?”

Morse winced at his choice of words.

Nevertheless, it did seem as if she had been steering him about half the evening, as if keen on evading Bruce. 

_“Hang on,” Georgina said. “Where’s Bruce?”_

_“He’s at the tables, of course,” Kay said._

Did she know, then, that since he wasn't shadowing her, he must be at the tables then, shadowing Bixby? 

“I’m just asking for the chance, the chance to talk to her. Just once. And, of course, you’ll be there the whole time," Bixby said. "If she doesn’t want to speak to me, you can simply toss me out. Right out the door, old man. Yes?”

Morse huffed a laugh. The image of him throwing the man, whose evening suit doubtless cost more than all of Morse’s possessions put together, out of the door of the shabby little lake house, was an amusing one, actually.

Morse sighed. “All right,” he said. “Fine. Why not? You can come on Wednesday.”

Bixby’s' face broke out into a wide and genuine smile, filled with gratitude; he was absolutely beaming in a manner that made Morse feel the need to look away.

It was painful to see it, the way the man allowed his emotions to show. For all that he played at sophistication, it was clear he was new at society life.

But then, an altogether different concern occurred to Morse, and he scowled, pulling on his ear. 

“What is it, old man?”

“Well,” Morse said. “It’s .... I don’t have much in at the moment. For tea.”

Nor had he a car nor any money to remedy that fact, but Morse didn’t want to say that.

Bixby looked alarmed at his words, as if he feared Morse was looking for an excuse to back out.

“Don’t worry about that. You won’t have to worry about a thing. I’ll take care of all the details. All right, old man?”

“All right,” Morse said. “Wednesday then.”

Morse turned then to go. He couldn’t stay there any longer.

The look of relentless optimism in Bixby’s shining dark eyes was a little much to take. It made Morse feel old, somehow.

Had he been that happy, in those bright fall days when Susan had first said that she loved him? 

He was certain that he had been. But it was so long ago now, it felt almost as if it had been in another life. 

The safest course was to leave. Bixby’s broad smile made it seem as if his joy might be contagious.

Morse didn’t feel it was something he could afford to catch.

********

Once he was half-way back to the lake house, Morse grounded to a halt. Then he turned, and went the other direction instead, making his way through the trees.

He chanced a glance up at Bixby’s tower bedroom as he passed. Perhaps Bixby watched him, even now, marking his path.

He searched the window, but the man was not there; perhaps, now that the party was fading into the coolness of the morning, the man finally slept, just as God slept, closing his eyes to the turning of the world.

Morse walked through the darkness along the edge of the lake, until he came upon a few rowboats, hidden in the tall grass. Gingerly, he stepped inside of one.

He must have had had a lot to drink, because his balance seemed to be off—the very act of settling himself in the broad and sturdy boat seemed a precarious one.

Once the boat had ceased its rocking, Morse set off across the lake, rowing gently through dark water, through air devoid of voices. Perhaps this is where he should stay. Perhaps this was the place in which he was meant to be. He could lie down in the boat like the Lady of Shalott and let it take him wherever it drifted.

Then he wouldn’t have to think about what he was going to do with himself. 

But then, the boat was nudging up against the muddy bank of the opposite shore. So, he got out, and walked up the rounded hill to the wide doors of Nick’s enchanted place.

******

As soon as he came in the door, Morse heard a quiet ripple of low laughter.

“What have they done to you?” Nick asked. “There you are, in a suit.”

Nick was there, leaning back against the pillows, his shirt left completely unbuttoned, so that it looked more like a robe from a simpler age. His legs were stretched out before him, so that his bare feet were propped up, crossed on a low table. He looked like a prince at his ease, tilting his head, watching Morse hover on his threshold.

He reached over lazily, and pulled a camera from out of the piles of jewel-colored cushions. Then he raised it to his face, and Morse was temporarily blinded by a flash of light.

“Stop that,” Morse said.

But Nick only laughed. “What have they done to you? Look at you. All dressed up and nowhere to go. You look like Belborough.”

Well, to hell with this. Morse would go back to the lake house, after all.

“Don’t go,” Nick said, quickly, as Morse turned to leave. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“I thought that’s why you came out here. To your enchanted place,” Morse said.

“I come out here to get away from everyone. But not to be alone. There’s a difference,” Nick remarked.

“Oh?” Morse asked. “Is there?”

Nick sat up then, in the circle of the pillows; like this, upright and alert, eyes glittering in the odd mix of candle and starlight, he looked like nothing so much as a mystical being, sitting cross-legged in the center of a mandala of colored silk. 

“Come here,” he said. “Sit down. Have some wine.”

The little note of command that Nick struck, as if he was indeed some sort of all-knowing sage, nearly made Morse turn right around again.

But Nick was already pouring a glass, and, well. . .

It seemed a shame to waste it.

Morse toed off his shoes and went over to the circle of pillows, collapsing in the midst of them.

Nick set the glass down on the low table before him. Morse went to reach for it, but, before he could, Nick was leaning forward— and then, with quick and gentle fingers, he was undoing his tie and pushing his jacket back from his shoulders, so that Morse had no choice but to shrug the thing off.

“There," he said. "Now you look much more respectable."

Morse huffed a laugh. Then he drained his glass.

Nick looked up at him as he poured him another, his gas-fire blue eyes seeming to crackle as he scrutinized him.

“So. How was the party?”

“Awful,” Morse said. “I thought it might be easier just to follow along, that it might take me out of myself, but all it served to do was to present me with a moral conundrum.”

Immediately, Nick began laughing.

“A moral conundrum? You can’t tell me you can still believe in such things. You sound like Mrs. Pettybon.”

“Who’s she?”

Nick shrugged. “Some bitter old woman who heads up the Keep Britain Decent campaign. I’m on her enemies list, it seems. I’m due to go on a show with her tomorrow. The Almanac.”

“They’ve scheduled you both together? Won’t that make for a bit of a circus?” Morse asked.

“Of course, it will. Why else would the producers plan it so? They’re probably hoping she’ll stone me right on stage.”

Nick drained his glass and said, “Bread and circuses. Give the people what they want, and, with luck, they won’t stop to think. They’ll be infinitely tractable. That’s the game, isn’t it?"

“Hmmmm,” Morse said, and he, following Nick, took a drink as well.

“So,” Nick asked. “What’s your conundrum?”

“I met Bixby, up at his party,” Morse said.

“Oh?” Nick said. “So he really exists, then? I was beginning to think he was some sort of mass hallucination. Some sort of communal head trip.”

“No,” Morse said. “He’s real enough. He’s . . . he’s in love with Kay. Has been for five years. He asked me to have him over to the lake house for tea, so he can be there when she drops by.”

“For _tea_?” Nick asked, looking delighted, a quirk of a smile playing around his face. "My, my, my. That sounds dodgy.”

Morse looked at him, his mouth tight. “It’s not having him to tea . . . it’s . . . I feel as if he’s asking me to play the matchmaker. And Kay’s a married woman.”

Nick laughed again at that. “Why shouldn’t she have a fling, if she wants? Sometimes you behave as if it’s 1867 rather than 1967.”

“You know, you’re the second person tonight to tell me what year it is. It’s not as if I’ve blown so far off course that I need reminding of that fact,” Morse said, tartly.

“And besides,” he added. “It’s not just a simple 'fling' he’s after. He wants her to divorce Bruce and marry him.”

Saying the words out loud made Morse rethink what he had agreed to. Who was he to get involved in breaking up their marriage, Kay’s and Bruce’s? Would Bixby be willing to take on Kay's daughter, or would he be like Gwen, sending off waves of disapproval, until Rose grew up just like he did, a stranger in her own family?

“ _Marry_ him? Now that’s disappointing,” Nick said. "The Great Bixby. Not only is he a real man _and_ in love, but, to top all, he's a proper bourgeois, to boot."

Nick reached into a box on the table, and, with a flash of a lighter, he lit up a joint and inhaled meditatively.

“Well," Nick said. "Why shouldn’t she take her crack at happiness? You see what her bastard of a husband gets up to here. I don’t know why Ken doesn’t simply throw Belborough out. He’s just the sort of capitalist pig he used to detest. Now they're the best of chums, it seems.”

Nick exhaled a great cloud of smoke into the chilled air.

“It’s all the same, it all comes down to filthy lucre," he lamented. "To connections. To who owns stock in Sunburst Records.”

“But Bruce abhors popular music,” Morse said. 

“But he loves money. It’s nothing to do with the music. They’re all the same. They see a company on the rise, they buy the stock, they cash in.”

Nick blew another stream of smoke into the air; Morse wished he wouldn't—the scent of the spiced and acrid smoke alone made him feel as if the pavilion was spinning.

“At any rate, there certainly can be no harm in letting her _talk_ to the man, if she wants. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to find her own happiness? The Ice Queen seems miserable enough, doesn’t she?”

“Don’t call her that,” Morse said, sharply.

“Why not? She’s lonely enough, I would think. Nothing lonelier than being married and still finding yourself alone, I would say.”

Nick took another drag and then sighed as he exhaled, “Or being in a family and finding yourself alone.”

He laid down, then, looking up at the domed ceiling. And then, it was as if he was a thousand miles away.

And strangely, even though Nick had been annoying him, Morse missed him suddenly. 

Nick was right. It was a far more melancholy thing to feel forever alone in the midst of company than to spend a lifetime in simple solitude.

The thought made Morse feel heavy somehow, tired.

So Morse lay down, too, and stretched out among the pillows, bringing his face level with Nick’s. And suddenly, he wasn’t alone; suddenly, he was in a separate and hushed world, surrounded by a mandala of cushions, close enough to Nick to see every flicker of expression on his face, to feel the warmth of him in the coolness of the night. 

“What?” Morse asked. “What’s the matter? Did you have a row? You and Ken?”

Nick sighed. “All they want to do is play the same three chords now, follow the same progressions over and over again. And why not? It works. It sells. I tried to introduce a little something different. And they all went mad.”

“What?” Morse asked. “What did you want to try?” 

“I wanted to sound them out on some lyrics I wrote. Based on a poem. By Baudelaire.”

 _“Baudelaire?_ ” Morse said, incredulously.

“Yeah. So, you see. You’ve had a bad influence on me,” he said, with a quirk of a smile. 

“Hmmmmm,” Morse said.

For a moment, they simply laid there, listening to the sounds of the night—to frogs and crickets ringing sublimely out of synch with one another in the tall grasses, and, off in the distance, beyond the trees, the music from Maplewick Hall beat on.

Morse closed his eyes, but, when he opened them, he found that Nick’s eyes were on him, bleary with whatever it was he was smoking and burning an even brighter gas-fire blue.

“What poem did you chose?” Morse asked.

“The Clock,” Nick said.

“Well. You can’t turn back the clock,” Morse said.

“No. I don’t suppose so. Hard to do otherwise when the future looks so uncertain. We have to change with the times. The others don’t see that. But the fact is, we’ve made it. And now can afford to be what we wanted to be at the beginning.”

“And what’s that?” Morse asked.

“Artists, man.”

Morse laughed.

An artist. And maybe that’s what he was now, too.

An escape artist.

He ought to have business cards printed out.

“I don’t know," Morse said. "Everyone keeps asking me, 'What are you going to do with yourself?’ But they don’t ask, ‘what is it we are doing right now?'”

Morse turned away from Nick, so he was looking up through the glass skylight of the pavilion, up into the night.

“And why should I do anything at all? The moment we’re in is the only one that's assured to us. They all have this . . . this _illusion_ of control. And it’s not so. The future comes blindly. And there’s nothing much you can do about it.”

“Ah,” Nick said, putting a warm hand on the side of his face, and turning Morse to look at him.

“What?"

“Spoken like a man after my own heart,” Nick said.

Nick was looking down on him, then, as if he were some sort of oracle. But that wasn’t true, either, it was all a lie, he was lost and he was in a spin.

Then, Nick’s mouth was on his, and his lips were soft for someone who looked at the world with such a hard and jaundiced eye. For a moment, Morse simply lay there, allowing the softness and the warmth to envelop him, until Nick brushed along his bottom lip with his, willing him to respond.

And then Morse was kissing him back, and it wasn’t so bad to lie here under tall and stately columns of the pavilion, with Nick’s hands on his back, pulling his body closer in to him. 

Nick planted a row of kisses up the side of his throat, leaving him shuddering, and then he was murmuring warmly in Morse's ear. 

“When are you going to tell me your real name?” he asked.

“Hmmmmm?" Morse asked. He felt as if his mind had stopped spinning for a moment, and it took more effort than he might have thought to process Nick’s question.

“Oh,” he said, at last. “I suppose never."

Nick pulled away then, so that they were looking into one another's eyes. “When are you going to trust me?" he asked. "Huh?"

“That’s simple. Same answer.”

A faint line formed between Nick's brows, as if he was trying to determine whether or not Morse had spoken in earnest, but then he was moving forward, drawing him back to him and meeting his mouth in another kiss.

But it wasn't quite the same. There was a different note to it—a note of loss, of distance, as if they were already on their way to their last goodbye. 

Ah, well. What did it matter after all? 

Morse broke off the kiss, turning his face so that he could speak. 

"It's Endeavour." 

"What?" Nick asked. "What is?" 

"It's my name. Endeavour.”

“Wait. Really?”

“Yes," Morse said. "It’s a virtue name.”

Nick smiled. "A virtue name, is it?"

"Yes."

"Hmmmmmm," Nick said, "Do you know what the beauty of a name like that is?"

"No," Morse said, ruefully. "Not really, to be honest."

"With a name like that," Nick said, "I could write a song for you, and no one would know what it was really about. They’d play it on the radio and no one would know it was about a man.”

“Oh, no, not this,” Morse groaned. 

But Nick was not dissuaded; he was laughing again, softly.

“All sorts of words rhyme with Endeavour. Whenever. Wherever." 

"Don't consider it for a moment," Morse said. 

"Forever," Nick said.

"Now who's bourgeois?" Morse asked. 

Nick smiled and slipped his hands down to Morse's waist, drawing him closer still, and Morse swung one long leg over him, soldering them more firmly together, holding them steady, like a fixed point in a sea of silk, as the stars slowly circled above. Until they too seemed to fade away, receding beyond all rational thought, dissipating into only the odd and irrational flash of white light.

************

Morse opened his eyes to the watercolor indigo of dawn. He felt worn and thin, like old paper.

He had been too much around people, that was it.

Carefully, he extricated himself from Nick's tangled limbs and stood up. He found his boxers and his trousers and slipped them on and then stepped into his shoes, not bothering to search for his socks amidst the piles of silk cushions.

He threw his shirt on as well, leaving it unbuttoned. His tie and his jacket, he didn't have the energy to locate. He could just get them the next time he came. Or Nick could have them. Either one. 

For now, he just wanted to get home. He just wanted to be alone. 

He walked through the trees, and the sun was just beginning to brighten the horizon, sending a shimmer of rose through the branches. And the woods were silent with sunrise, and it was just the remedy he'd been seeking.

But when he reached the lake house, he saw it, through the green-gray firs: a large black police Jag parked just fifteen feet from his door. 

His first instinct was to run. He wasn’t up to this. Whatever was coming. Not now.

But no. 

He was far too tired to run. He just wanted to sit and rest, secure in the snug corners of the lake house. 

And who knew? Perhaps he might feel better, after all, if he confessed, just as those men had said he would.

Not to the murder of Chief Constable Standish. But to the near-murder of Inspector Thursday. To the near-murder of one of the few people in the world who had ever taken time to show him any kindness.

_"It was my fault. I was careless. I was too slow."_

_"My stupidity almost made Mrs. Thursday a widow."_

_"How hopeless under ground falls the remorseful day."_

Perhaps he would simply tell the truth. Thursday deserved no less, after all.

Or perhaps he wouldn’t. Perhaps he'd find a way to lie. Perhaps that would be the kindest course. 

It was, after all, a skill he had long put off mastering. 

Wearily, he walked up the worn steps and pushed open the door.


	4. Light

Morse walked up the steps to the lake house slowly, a sinking feeling settling somewhere low and deep in his gut. He trod carefully, as if he hoped that by doing so he might not wake any sleeping dragons within—as if he thought that by making himself small enough and quiet enough, he might pass unnoticed to his narrow bed, pull up the covers and be left alone, unseen.

He opened the door—wincing as it creaked on its hinges—and, sure enough, there was Thursday, sitting in a tattered arm chair, looking as if he had made himself quite at home—a glass of Scotch, a newspaper, his pipe and his hat, all spread out on the small table beside him.

The reading lamp had been snapped on, casting the old Inspector into circle of yellow light, making him to look like some careworn annunciating angel, set apart from the darkness of the rest of the cabin.

Morse found he could do nothing but to stand there, feeling brutishly on display.

There was, then, to be no escape.

He waited for Thursday to utter some word—of anger or of admonition or of blame or ..... _something_.

But no word came. Thursday simply waited, watching Morse with infinite patience, as if he had all the time in the world.

“How are you?” Morse said, at last.

Because it was clear they would have to begin _somewhere_. Begin perhaps all over again—the bond of two years of stake-outs and late-night consultations, of mornings waiting in his front hallway while Mrs. Thursday straightened his lapels and looked at him with love in her eyes—a look that Morse was never quite sure if he should be a witness to, a look which made him to feel as if were eavesdropping somehow—that was all gone now, utterly dissolved. Lost in one night of failure and loss. Lost in the months that followed, months of uncertainty, and sickening revelations, and yes, even of fear.

“Well,” Thursday replied, laconically. “You know. Liver still works.”

And then he reached out his hand, and offered Morse a bottle.

So.

There was to be no hammer of judgment, then.

Morse had steeled himself for it, knowing that Thursday must have had plenty of opportunity to look around the place, plenty of opportunity to see how he lived now: the clutter of records and the untidy, unmade bed, the sad contents of his barren larder, the empty bottles in the bin.

_You think I missed all the bottles around your flat?_

Morse took the bottle and turned away from him, moving over to the scrap of counter by the white porcelain sink, and poured himself a drink. It was easier this way, keeping his back turned, avoiding Thursday’s gaze—a steady, dark and even—incredibly enough—fond gaze that suggested that he knew him, that he knew him through and through.

Which was a lie.

Because he _didn’t_ know him, he didn’t know him at all. He had no idea to what depths he might fall—to what further depths he might _still_ fall, if only he might figure out how to go about it.

Because it would be only when he could manage to dismantle himself completely, so that he lay in pieces, that Morse could finally rest.

Only then would he be assured that he would fail no one else.

What can anyone expect from only pieces of a man, after all? 

“How long you been holed up here?” Thursday asked, then, a note of incredulity in his voice.

As if to say, this won’t do, lad.

As if to say, this isn’t you, Morse.

But it would and it was. And he should know that. Thursday should know that better than anyone, if he would be honest with himself.

Because Morse had been too slow. Because his stupidity had almost made Mrs. Thursday a widow.

“Since I got out," Morse said. 

Thursday leaned forward in his seat, narrowing his eyes. 

And here it was.

It was starting, just as Morse had feared. And suddenly, he felt claustrophobic; suddenly it was too much like being in the interrogation room, what with he and Thursday, sitting here alone in the darkness, under that circle of that unrelenting light. Suddenly, he felt as if he couldn't breathe properly. 

_It_ _would_ _be_ _much_ _better_ _for_ _you_ , _Constable_ _Morse_ , _if_ _you_ _would_ _simply_ _confess_. _We_ _have_ _all_ _the_ _evidence_ _we_ _need_ _for_ _a_ _full_ _conviction_. _You_ _could_ _ask_ _for_ _leniency_.

Morse turned and walked to the other end of the cottage—It didn’t take long, as the whole place was perhaps only thirty paces end to end—and snapped on the light by the bed.

There.

Now the place was a bit brighter. Now the lamp beside Thursday seemed not so much as a spotlight, boring into him with a scrutiny that he could not withstand.

Morse straightened, rising, and exhaled sharply through his nose, his heart rate slowing, his breathing evening.

“You see the findings, then?” Thursday asked. 

And then his breath caught once again, high in his throat.

“Ha! The whitewash!”

“What did you expect?” Thursday asked.

“Better!”

“We broke them. The worst are gone. What’s left, scattered to the four winds. And I’m light one bagman.”

“Ask Jakes,” Morse said.

“The situation is not vacant,” Thursday said.

Morse snorted. Of course, it was vacant. Jakes should jump at the chance. It was what he had always wanted, Jakes: with Morse the hell out of the way, the position would be his at last.

“He spoke for you,” Thursday said, as if he could read Morse’s thoughts. “Strange, too. Mr. Bright. It’s _over_.”

Morse wheeled around.

“Not for me!”

Thursday sat and watched him, a glimmer of disbelief in his eyes, an indulgent smile hinting around the corners his mouth. Morse could almost hear his thoughts.

_All right. I’ll listen to your strum and drang and bullshit, but I won’t believe a word of it. I’ll sit here patiently until you get it all out of your system, and then you’ll come back to work, back where you belong._

But it was all a lie. He didn’t belong there. They had all known it, all along, too, Jakes and Mr. Bright and even affable Jim Strange. 

  
“You live in the shadows long enough, you forget the sunlight,” Morse said. “I’m .... I’m finished with it.”

The light.

It was odd, the word, wasn’t it? How it could mean the lack of something, and the surfeit of something? How it could denote a thing that’s missed and a thing that plays over sparkling water?

To be light, or to be light. 

And I’m light one bagman.

You forget the light.

“You didn’t put your papers in,” Thursday countered.

And the light.

Morse shook his head, as if to toss the thought away. For now, they were back on to more prosaic matters.

Papers.

Papers that rustled and papers that flew in the wind, caught like sails or clouds and . . .

And was there anything about the way he lived here that would lead Thursday to consider that he spared one thought as to _paperwork_? 

“Oh, I’m still suspended,” Morse said. “Pending inquiry. They want me gone, they can fire me.”

And god how he wished that they would. Spare him one bit of grief at least.

He closed his eyes and took a drink of Scotch, but it was no use. Thursday was still watching him. 

“Then what?” he said. “You’re just going to sit here, feeling sorry for yourself? We’ve got a young man, recovered from the lake, who’s been slashed to pieces.” 

And Morse’s stomach churned like he might be sick. That arm, that terrible arm, floating there by itself, along the edge of the lake. Was the watch waterproof, did it still work, ticking away the minutes, not knowing it was strapped onto not even a corpse but only a part of one . . . ? And . . . and he was just like him, that unknown man, wasn’t he? Torn to pieces and . . .

Morse closed his eyes tight and, again, shook his head.

“I _can’t!_ ” he said. “I’m not the _same._ I wouldn’t be any use to you.”

He turned his back on Thursday again then, so that he wouldn’t have to look at those dark eyes, and leaned against the sink, keeping his face turned toward a taxidermied fish in a glass shadow box that hung on the wall before him.

And even here, could he not escape corpses? Who had done such a thing to this fish? Who had decided to lock its body up in a box and hang it on the wall, as if death were some sort of art form, posing it in a parody of what it should have been, glimmering and thrashing in the sunlit lake?

“No?” Thursday asked. 

Morse exhaled, trying to calm the beating of his heart.

“No,” he said quietly.

“Well,” Thursday said, and Morse could hear him, rustling about, putting his pipe back into this pocket, and oh, god, he was going to go, he was actually leaving, he was going to leave him here, standing and looking at this tragedy of a fish, locked for all of eternity in its stupid glass box. 

“Fair enough,” Thursday said. And he could hear him drain his glass.

And then he could hear him rise, he could hear the sound of the worn chair springing back into shape.

And was Morse going to get off that easily? Was Thursday actually going to leave him here, just leave him alone here, just as he had thought that he wanted? To let him stay here, here in the world of the lake house, a world in which he had complete control?

“Mind how you go,” Thursday said. And then he was heading for the half-open door. 

Because no. No. it wasn’t just what Morse wanted, after all. 

He wanted Thursday’s slow and heavy steps to halt. He wanted Thursday to turn round, to come back, to shout at him, to blame him for all, to grab him by the arms and shake him, to drag him away from here, to make him go home. 

Wherever that was. 

And Morse wanted to turn and call after him, and it was his last chance, falling, fading with every footstep that carried Thursday out the door.

He wanted to go to the threshold and shout, “Why would you go back, after everything? Why should I go back?”

He wanted to shout, “Don't leave me here!”

And so he stood, waiting, scarcely able to breathe, looking at the lifeless fish and listening for returning footsteps, even long after he heard the engine of the Jag start up and slowly drive away. 

*******

Morse was lying stretched out along his camp bed, watching the shadows on the far wall slowly change and contort with the sinking of the sun, when, suddenly, there was a series of sharp knocks on the door.

He sat up with a jolt. 

Someone was there, someone was right outside his door, and, suddenly, his heart was beating hard against his ribs.

“Pagan?” Bruce called. 

Bruce.

It was only Bruce.

Morse remained where he was, taking breath after deep breath, listening more to the beat of his heart in his chest than to Bruce's thundering around outside. 

“Pagan? Come on, now, Pagan. I know you're there.”

Slowly, Morse got up and went to the door. 

Bruce was there on the top step, in a well-tailored blue suit, his dark eyes bright with alcohol, looking oddly fey. His indigo blue coupe, gleaming as bright as a mirror in the darkness, was parked out under the old elm tree behind him, and, in it, sat Jeanne Hearne, waiting, wearing a deep red scarf in her bright red hair. 

He had to be joking. 

“Pagan,” Bruce said, running a hand back to smooth his slick, dark hair. “I just came to collect you for the party. At Maplewick Hall.”

“I'm not going,” Morse said.

He had no wish to go to the party at all, let alone with Bruce, let alone with Bruce and Jeanne.

Morse was Kay’s friend first. Surely Bruce knew that.

Bruce leaned forward, leaning his bulk into the doorway, taking up more space, in Morse’s opinion, than should have been his fair allotment. Morse had always hated that, the way the man tended to throw his weight around, both literally and figuratively. 

“Help me out, will you?” he muttered. “I know you never were the clubbable type, but, Jeanne's sister is in town and . .” 

“Oh, no,” Morse said.

His response must have been louder and more vehement than he intended, because Jeanne, evidently, heard him. 

“Catherine is said to be very attractive by people who ought to know,” she said.

“Pagan,” Bruce said. “Stop being a pain in the arse and help me out, all right? What else do you have to do, eh? You just going to sit here on the sidelines? You’ve got to be out of drink in there by now. Now let’s go.”

He leaned forward again then, so close that Morse’s nostrils felt assaulted by the blare of his aftershave, so close that he could feel his warm and whiskey-tinged breath.

“Come on, Pagan. The girls are all excited. I told them that you’re friends with Nick Wilding. That you can introduce them.”

This made Morse even less inclined to go along with him. The whole point of him and Nick—if there _was_ a point—was to get away from all of that—the judgements and the expectations and the scrutiny.

“I'm not really . . .” Morse began, casting about for some excuse and looking down at his rumpled shirt.

“Like it matters over there. This isn’t Bixby’s we’re going to, this isn’t some gala at Marston Hall. Just . . .” Then he hesitated. “Jesus. Aren't those the same clothes you had on yesterday?”

Morse looked down again at this shirt, and thank god, he managed to stop himself before the question fell from his lips.

“ _Yesterday? When was yesterday?”_

He realized that he must have drifted off to sleep at some point after Thursday had left, because this morning seemed like yesterday, and yesterday had seemed like the day before and then . . . 

Bruce was watching his face, a crease forming between his brows. 

“Well,” he said, “a few more hours aren’t going to make a hell of a lot of difference at this point. Let’s get you out of your fusty little den, for a while,” and then, before Morse knew what was happening, Bruce was doing what Thursday had not—taking him bodily by the arm and guiding him out to the car.

“Be the best thing for you. Besides. I’m sure you've got nothing left to drink in there, or else you would have drunk it.”

He laughed deeply, as if he thought his comment terribly witty, but Morse felt himself frowning, because it was true.

And the next thing Morse knew he was in the car, shoved up alongside Jeanne in the wide front seat.

“Do you really know Nick Wilding?” Jeanne asked. “He’s such a doll.”

And Morse had to stifle a groan—it was too much—Bruce and Jeanne, and Nick, and Thursday, all in his mind at once—they were three worlds that should be kept separate, worlds that never should collide. 

Bruce started the car, and Morse looked out over the trees as they passed, as resigned as if he was being personally escorted off to hell.

************

By the time they had collected Jeanne’s sister Catherine and a few of their friends, however, Morse was beginning to change his mind. 

It wasn’t bad tearing along in the coupe, leaving the ghosts of that morning behind him. 

There was only one thing to do, after all, when the solitude of the woods became too much for him. 

To go to a party at one of the great houses on the lake. 

And there was only one thing to do when the parties were too loud, too bright, too much. 

To get roaring drunk. 

And there was only one thing to do when his head was splitting, when he felt as if he was dying, torn apart by the inevitable predawn epiphany.

To seek the solitude of the cabin in the woods. 

And so on and so on. . . 

And so, Morse stood by the bar, downing a Scotch, working on step two of the process, watching Bruce—looking slightly incongruous amongst the partygoers—out on the dance floor with Jeanne. It wasn’t that Bruce was all that much older than the rest of them— but there was something about him that _seemed_ older: he already had it, that air of a man who had given his life over to the cares of business, that look of the college athlete gone slightly to seed. 

“Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to,” Catherine said, sliding up to him. 

Morse startled, surprised at the bluntness of her words.

There was something poignant about Catherine’s perfume, which smelled faintly of soft roses. It seemed odd that she would go to such extremes in her appearance—the electric green minidress, the heavy black eyeliner, the improbable white-blonde hair—and then wear a scent so gentle and girlish.

Or maybe, it _did_ suit her. Maybe that’s just what she was, under her pose.

She was all right, really. She was just like him, perhaps, wearing a mask that didn’t quite suit. 

“No?” Morse asked.

It seemed strange, too, that she would tell him such a thing, as if he didn’t know any of the parties involved, when he was quite sure he knew Kay and Bruce better than she did.

“Yeah,” she confirmed. “It’s stupid. What they ought to do is divorce their spouses and marry each other. But Bruce can’t get a divorce, because his wife’s Catholic, you see.”

Morse huffed a laugh and downed his drink.

As far as he ever knew, Kay was raised C of E, and even her affiliation with that Church was tenuous to say the least. At this point, she was as much Church of England as he was a Quaker, and that was the truth of it.

“Do you want to dance?” Catherine asked. 

“No,” Morse said. 

“So? What then? Are we just going to stand here? You aren't much of a date, you know.” 

“Well,” Morse said. “Perhaps when I’m more drunk.”

Catherine laughed.

“That’s a promise, then,” she said. “I’m taking you at your word.”

“Hmmmmmm,” Morse said.

And when did he become such an easy liar? He had no intention of going anywhere near the stage, anywhere near the dance floor.

Morse set his glass down on the bar to be filled again.

**********

It wasn’t awful, the party, not at first.

Catherine wasn’t a bad dancer, if you could call it dancing, whatever the hell it was they were doing, once it passed a certain hour.

It wasn’t as if anyone was following any particular steps—there was no room, really, on the crowded floor for such elaborateness, no room other than to clasp hands and spin and pulse to the general beat of the awful and relentlessly pounding music. It was as if all of their distinct bodies had joined to form one writhing organism, one living heartbeat of the party.

Or no. Perhaps it was more like the movement of a thrashing creature, one in its death throes.

Morse had no idea how he had gotten to be there, what to do once he was there. It was everything he hated, really. And he drank until the room was tipping and revolving on its axis, and it was delicious, a sort of forgetfulness. He had merged into the crowd, he was no longer alone, but, when he looked up onto the next landing, he could imagine that he was there, too, looking down on himself with a face full of bored contempt.

He was within and without. Moving to the wild blue pulse that was at once so foreign and so familiar. And Bruce was laughing loudly. And suddenly Georgina was there, too, her eyes flecked with green, bright as a bottle. She was trying to tell him something, something about the way the sun had set the day before, leaving them all bathed in a golden light. 

The party began to dissolve into a golden light, into that warm glow that made Morse almost to believe that love was possible. 

And there was a flash of bright light, then, but whether it was in his mind or in his eyes, Morse couldn’t say.

And he needed another drink. 

He went over to the bar, but, as he went to perch on a stool to order another Scotch, he found his equilibrium was off; somehow, he missed the stool and ended up falling in a graceless heap, crashing onto the floor.

A group of men beside him were laughing, but then a girl with long blonde hair and cheekbones sharp as ice was leaning down over him. 

“Are you alright?” she asked.

Her eyes were cool and blue, but her voice was warm and surprisingly husky, with a trace of a Scandinavian accent. 

“Yes,” Morse said. 

She held out her hand and took his forearm, pulling him to his feet. 

“You have beautiful eyes, do you know that?” she asked, as he straightened beside her.

“I’m right here, you know,” a blonde young man, who was standing next to her at the bar, said.

But she only laughed, probably at the stupid expression that must have been on Morse's face, and then Morse blinked, once more blinded by a flash of light. 

“Sorry,” the girl said. “I’ve had rather a lot to drink. But I think you’ve had rather _too_ much to drink.” 

“Who are you to go telling him?” came a voice from behind him. “He's with my sister.”

Morse turned around, but then found he head to grab at the bar to keep from toppling over again.

It was Jeanne, who had spoken, her small face screwed up in a scowl. 

The blonde gave her an icy stare, as If she could scarcely believe that someone such as Jeanne should dare to address her august person, and then she floated off into the party. 

“How dare she!” Jeanne cried. “Bruce? Did you see the way that tart looked at me?”

“Is it any wonder, darling?” Bruce said. “The last time we were here, you threw a drink at her.”

“Serves her right, too,” Jeanne said. “The way she looks down on everyone, all cool as lemonade, so hoity-toity. She thinks she's too good for anyone. But I know what she really is. _Au pair_ my arse. She’s sleeping with that professor of hers. Dr. Lorenz. I heard it on good authority from several people, you know.”

Jeanne snorted. “And her young enough to be his daughter. She comes over here with some boy from her night class. But I know why she's _really_ learning Spanish. And it ain’t go to El Pravda, let me tell you that.”

“El Prado,” Morse said.

“What?” Jeanne asked. 

“You must mean El Prado. It’s a museum in Madrid. _Pravda_ is the name of a Soviet newspaper.”

“Oh, who cares?” Jeanne said.

“Yes, shut up, Pagan,” Bruce said. “No one gives a damn.”

There was another flash of light. 

And then Morse realized why he kept seeing them, the flashes of light; they were not all in his head, after all. It one of those girls, Ella—or was it Emma?—taking photographs.

But why? Who wants to remember a night like this? People come here to forget, after all.

And where did Georgina go? 

But then, there was a warm hand on his elbow, guiding him out through the crowds, and into the coolness of the night, and his heart could have burst, he was so grateful that someone was taking him away from there. 

Morse half-fell into the rowboat, and then there was the cold sound of water as Nick took the oars, and the warm sound of Nick’s laughter, and the cool light of a thousand stars above, like bits of a broken mirror, passing overhead. Morse lay back in the boat to watch them, and felt the chill of water that had remained pooled at the bottom of the rowboat seeping thickly through his shirt. 

And then he was traveling over cool grass, as he and Nick were stumbling together, toward the silence of the pavilion. As soon as the door was closed behind them, their mouths collided, their hands flew to the collars of one another’s shirts, their long fingers getting in one another’s way, as they undid button after excruciating button. 

Suddenly, Morse was laying back, onto the nest of satin cushions, warm, not cold like the water at the bottom of the boat, and Nick’s mouth was on his, and it was silent here, blessedly silent, nothing but the quiet rustle of fabric and then the quieter stroke of skin against skin.

The world fell away around him, kiss by kiss and touch by touch, until there was only Nick, lowering himself on top of him, pressing him further into the softness of satin.

“I want to see what’s beyond the door,” Nick breathed hotly in his ear.

But while Nick was mumbling words from Huxley, Morse’s mind was, inexplicably, full of lines of from a novel by Vargas Llosa.

_And he was like Peru, Zavalita was, he’d fucked himself up somewhere along the line._

_But if you fucked yourself up, at least that meant that you couldn't fuck up anyone else._

Until, finally, blessedly, there were no more thoughts at all. Until all was a hush, reduced to the rhythm of their hips rocking in unison, a steady beat that wasn’t opera and that wasn’t even rock ‘n roll, but something even more simple and more primal, something as savage as the presence that waited in the woods.

Until the light of the stars shining through the skylight above him burned not cool, but hot as sparks of electricity, electricity that flooded through him, flooded warm inside him, as he cried out, keening wildly, into Nick’s ear. Until he didn’t know whether those fading stars were in his mind or in his eyes, and Nick was collapsing, slick with sweat, on top of him.

Until his mind was going dark, even as the horizon was just beginning to glimmer with light. 

And the light.

If you live in the darkness long enough, you forget the light. 

*********

It was mid-morning, the summer sun well on its way toward its zenith, when Thursday and Jakes pulled up in front of Maplewick Hall, out on a call about yet another missing person. 

The second to disappear from a party at the house within the course of one week.

Ingrid Hjort. 22. Danish national. Thursday felt his stomach clench as he thought of the girl’s photograph, taken from her passport and left by her employer, Dr. Lorenz, who had reported her missing when it was clear that she had never returned from the party the night before.

She could have been a friend of Joanie’s, she was that young. 

Thursday steeled himself for a bit of a battle as he walked up the wide steps. He knew the pop group could be uncooperative, but this wasn’t some call out about noise complaints or pot.

A girl’s life weighed in the balance.

He would not rest until he questioned every person left in the place, until he could figure out just what in the hell it was that going on at the great house on the dark lake.

Until whatever secrets that were held there were brought, at last, to light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit on the surreal side, I know... but it’s all in honor of the end of chapter 2 of the Great Gatsby.
> 
> What the heck, Nick Carraway?
> 
> Anyway, I haven’t updated this one in a while, so I’d really love to know if anyone is following it still! This one is going off the rails, but there will be an eventual intervention! 
> 
> And I didn’t mean to leave Morse stuck on that step for so long....  
> Thanks for reading :0)
> 
> Oh, and I just thought to check —Conversation in the Cathedral wasn’t published until 1969. But since this is an AU anyway, I’m pretending it came out in 67....  
> *Sigh*  
> And to think I spent so much time trying to figure out if it was plausible that Morse might have access to a copying machine in my other AU! :D


	5. Circle

Thursday and Jakes strode across the lawns of Maplewick Hall in lockstep with one another, moving with a briskness that was out of keeping with the languid, summer morning haze that seemed to engulf the place. Up above, branches heavy with leaves and with the droning of bees drifted in a wind as soft as a sigh, and trills of birdsong poured out like the slow warble of water.

The house itself was silent, as if the people therein were still asleep, or else moving with a slowness befitting the torpor of the day.

They climbed the steps leading up to the front door and found it had been left half-open—as if whoever had last passed through it had been too drunk or too careless or too weary to have bothered to have closed it properly.

Thursday rang the bell despite the standing invitation the open door seemed to offer, but, although they could hear a low murmur of voices from deep within the house, no one came to answer.

“Hello?” Thursday called. "Oxford City Police." 

After waiting for moments that seemed like an age in the wilting heat, Thursday pushed the door open the rest of the way, and the two went inside.

The foyer and the two large front rooms flanking it were dark and still, their footsteps seeming to punctuate the silence like afternoon thunderclaps as they walked further into the house, until, finally, the sound of the voices grew louder, tempered by an occasional indolent riff on an electric guitar.

Thursday and Jakes followed a dim hall and came out into a room at the back of the house, one illuminated by tall, south-facing windows that looked over the pool and gardens, shimmering with leaves and with water that captured and reflected and refracted the light.

The room itself was an unholy mishmash of what could only be termed as _things_ : paintings large and small covered nearly every inch of the deep red walls, delicate tables were covered with bottles and candles and magazines, and a tiger skin rug lay spread out over a grand piano, its great staring eyes frantic, as if looking into the depths of some impending disaster, one only it could foresee. 

It was like an assault to the senses, the light and the dark and the sharp edges and the curves and the scent of incense and pot.

A man with a beard and wild hair sat behind a drum set, looking up at them in interest, while another man, one with long hair parted straight down the middle, seemed to turn away at their approach.

In the middle of the room stood Ken Wilding—a man Thursday had had dealings with many times before now—dressed in a purple shirt left far too open at the collar, tucked into too tight jeans. He was scruffy and unshaven, looking for all the world like he had just woken up.

But then, Thursday felt he always rather looked like that.

“What is it you want now?” Wilding said, as soon as he noticed Thursday in the doorway. “I thought we had all of that cleared up. No one here saw the Parker boy leave.” 

The aggressiveness of Wilding’s tone set Thursday’s nerves—already on edge by the heat of the day and by the case—to the breaking point.

“This is about another matter,” he said. “It’s about a girl who’s gone missing. Ingrid Hjort. Blonde. Twenty-two years old. Last seen here at your party.”

A flicker of uncertainty passed over Wilding’s haughty features. “You’ve just described about a quarter of the people up here last night. Do you know how many people we have through the house in a day? If some girl decided to go home with someone else, that’s hardly our affair.”

“Well,” Thursday said. “I suggest you _make_ it your affair. It looks to me for all the world like you’ve got a bit of a problem here. First Ricky Parker. Now we’ve got a young woman missing. Something’s rotten around this place, and make no mistake. How would you like it if I tore this place apart? No telling what I might find, is there?”

Wilding held up both hands. “Look. We don’t want trouble. But you can’t pin some missing girl on us. I know how you lot operate.”

“No one is trying to _‘pin’_ anything on you,” Jakes said. “But we do need your cooperation. The more quickly we find Miss Hjort, the more likely her case is to end happily.”

Jakes paused, then, and lit up a cigarette, taking a meditative drag. “So, any assistance you can give us in that department will be duly noted for future reference.”

Just then, a girl with dark hair sauntered into the room, wearing nothing but a bikini and a gauzy robe.

Christ. Who knew what sort of place this was? The girl looked barely eighteen, and here she was, flickering about the place, in not much more than her all together.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Ken Wilding said. “I know my rights. You can’t simply waltz in here and accuse us of . . . :”

“No one is accusing you of anything,” Thursday said.

“Be cool, Ken,” the man at the drum set said, at last. “This isn’t about you. This is about the girl, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Thursday said, encouragingly. “I’m not going to wait until we find her in the same state as what we’ve found of Ricky Parker. So start talking or we start looking. How’s that, then?”

“Who is she, did you say?” the girl suddenly asked.

“Ingrid Hjort. Twenty-two years old. Tall, blonde. Would have had a Danish accent,” Thursday said. “Miss….?”

“Carr,” the girl replied. “Emma Carr.”

“Ingrid?” Miss Carr mused. “But I know her. I’ve met her a few times. She’s come out to a few of the parties. With some people from her night class. The au pair, right? She works for Dr. Lorenz.”

“Yeah, that’s her,” Jakes confirmed. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Last night,” Miss Carr said. “At the party. We were talking at the bar.” 

“What did you talk about?”

“Him, mostly.”

“Who?” Thursday prompted.

“Dr. Lorenz,” Miss Carr replied.

“And what did she say?” Jakes asked.

“That he’d been in a sour mood of late.”

Thursday paused. An older man, coming into the nick, looking for a young girl. His so-called au pair. So often in the case of young girls, it was the suspect who found the body.

Or reported it missing.

Could they have been lovers? Could Lorenz have been jealous of someone she was here with, at the party?

Or could he have been pressuring the girl? And then gotten angry when she wouldn’t give him his way?

“About what?” Thursday asked. “Did she say?”

Miss Carr shrugged. “Something about work. About some research project he’d been running. He’d had some setback, evidently. Something misplaced, gone missing at his lab.”

And . . . with that, Thursday’s theory began to fade like a beam of sun behind a late afternoon cloud.

Research troubles hardly seemed the stuff of a crime of passion. Or of a sex case.

“Did she say anything specific?” Thursday asked.

“No. Just that he’d been in a brown study over it.” 

“Did you see her leave with anyone? Ingrid?” Thursday asked.

Perhaps she had run into a bad sort here, come to a tragic end? God only knew what type you might find up here.

“No. Pagan might know, though,” Miss Carr said.

And again, Thursday felt a familiar prickle, the old copper’s instinct, at the back of his neck.

_Pagan?_

What sort of character went by such a name?

An unsavory one, most likely.

Ken Wilding began to look uneasy, bolstering Thursday’s suspicions that, perhaps, now at last, they might be honing in on something.

“So you think this Pagan might know something? You saw them talking?” Thursday prompted.

“ _Talking?”_ Miss Carr laughed. “He more or less crashed into her. He was trying to sit on a barstool and fell over. She helped him up. So perhaps she might have said something to him.”

“Could she have gone off with him? This Pagan?” Thursday asked.

Miss Carr huffed another laugh. “I doubt it,” she said. “He could barely stand. He can’t have gotten far. He’s still here most likely.”

Ken looked even more disquieted at that, exchanging dark glances with the man at the drum set.

“Who is this?” Jakes asked. “Pagan?” 

“Just some drunk. One of that posh set,” Ken Wilding said, tersely.

Miss Carr, in the meanwhile, was looking more and more pleased with herself.

“He’s probably with Nick, at his enchanted place, right now, if you want to talk to him.”

Ken Wilding looked away from the drummer then, barely able to stifle a flinch.

Ah.

So that was it, then.

They had nothing, really, to do with the case, those anxious looks.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, one supposed.

It didn’t take any leap of the imagination to guess where Miss Carr was going with this. Nick Wilding, Thursday knew from the ubiquitous posters, was the heartthrob of the group. If he had stumbled off with another man, drunk, off to this so-called “enchanted place”—it was most likely not to talk politics or cricket.

And it would have left Miss Carr, here, rankled no end, most likely, not to have been the one extended the invite.

Well. Thursday had no interest whatsoever in whatever it was this lot got up to. He wasn’t in the business of rooting about, wasting his time on incidents of gross indecency. In a week or so, Parliament was likely to make it all a moot point, anyway.

In the meanwhile, a young girl was missing. A young girl who could just as easily be his Joan.

So. If they weren’t of a mind to cooperate, perhaps it was best he remind them just who was in charge here.

“What exactly is your business here? You in the group?” he asked.

“I’m a seamstress. I work on the band’s stage clothes.”

“A seamstress? And how did you get that position?”

She shrugged. “Met the band after a show,” she said. “And they offered me the job.”

“How old are you?” he asked Miss Carr, then, pointedly. 

“Eighteen,” she said. She raised her head, then, meeting his eyes. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

“Of course not, it’s a free country,” Ken Wilding said. “More free than it has been,” he added. “Or it will be, soon.”

And they were all there, then. They had all reached the same understanding.

“Look,” Thursday said, trying to put the matter as clearly as possible. “My only interest is in finding this young woman. If this Pagan is the last person she spoke with, if he has any information for us at all, it might just save her life.”

“Ken,” the drummer said, pointedly. 

Ken sighed, and, finally, nodded in agreement.

“Right,” he said. “Right.”

He was a snotty little bastard, Ken Wilding, but he wasn’t heartless.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you out.”

***

Ken Wilding seemed uncomfortable enough on their row over to the small island, but he was even more so when they got to the doors of the Victorian garden pavilion, tall and imposing in a Greek revival style, with columns as thick as tree trunks.

“Wait,” he said, holding up his hands. “Wait here.”

Thursday rolled his eyes. It was nearly eleven on a Wednesday, but it seemed as if this Pagan and Nick Wilding—and god only knew who else who might be with them—were not even awake.

Or perhaps they were stirring and just not decent.

Well, if Ken Wilding wanted to rouse them up, then, so be it. Thursday had no wish to walk into anything he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t seen.

Ken slipped inside, leaving he and Jakes standing in the tall grass, waiting in the sun. For the longest time, they didn’t hear even the trace of a sound from within.

“Christ,” Jakes snorted in disgust. “I don’t suppose these blokes have to work for a living?”

“Hmmmm,” Thursday said.

In a few minutes, Ken returned to the door and opened it, ushering them inside.

“I just told them,” Ken Wilding said.

Thursday snorted.

_Warned_ them more like.

They went inside, blinking as their eyes adjusted to the dim light. Nick Wilding’s “enchanted place,” it transpired, was much the same as the house—there too many things in the room, despite the airiness of the space. Bouquets of dried flowers hung upside down, framing the windows like fantastical spider webs, and the walls, bold with simple Tuscan murals, seemed at war with the endless clutter of bric-a-brac—of bottles and vases of incense sticks and throw cushions. 

In the center of a wide circle of pillows sat Nick Wilding, regarding them with the same imperiousness as his brother—but there was a difference between them, too. There was something in the younger brother's face that was at once more open, less guarded, than in the elder's, but also something more distant there as well.

Drugs, most likely. For all the intensity of Nick’s expression, he gave off an aura of it, of half-baked wiftiness, of someone who had only one foot in the here and now. 

Nick looked up, bored and impatient, his too-bright blue gaze streaming right through them, but Thursday had eyes for only one person.

Standing off to the side, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else on the planet, was Morse.

He looked awkward as hell, simply standing there in a rumpled white Oxford shirt. But there weren’t any chairs in the place, and he seemed to feel it was beneath his dignity to loll about as Nick Wilding was.

Thursday could barely suppress a snort.

From the state of him, it didn’t seem as if it had been too far beneath his dignity fifteen minutes ago.

He tried to meet the lad’s eyes, but Morse kept his gaze cast down, trained on a spot on the floor a few feet ahead of him.

Well.

Thursday was having none of it. That lad could bloody well look him in the face. A little late to be playing the blushing, proper little Greats scholar, wasn’t it? He might be embarrassed now, caught out in such a place, disheveled and misbuttoned, but it didn’t seem as if he was too embarrassed last night, when he came trailing out here, drunk off his arse, no doubt.

“Pagan,” Thursday said heavily. “You’re Pagan.”

It was a statement and not a question, one which, despite his pugnacious tone, Morse decided to sidestep. 

“I remember her,” Morse said. “Ingrid. She . . . she helped me up.”

Because he’d been falling all over the floor. Christ.

“Any idea who she might have left with?” Thursday asked.

“I thought she was here with her Spanish class. She was here with a young man. Blonde. About her age. But . . . it could be that . . .”

And here he trailed off, looking uncertain.

“Could be that _what_?” Thursday prompted.

“It could be that she’s having an affair with her employer. With a Dr. Lorenz.”

There were three beats of silence, then, during which both Ken and Nick Wilding widened their eyes at Morse alarmingly.

Because that was just how they weren’t supposed to operate, little cliques such as this. They were _supposed_ to keep one another’s secrets. Not blurt such things out in the clear light of day. To the police, of all people.

It annoyed him no end, Ken and Nick sending Morse a message like that right in front of his face, however innocent the motivation might be. This was a missing persons investigation. Possibly, a murder investigation. All of those little secrets were meaningless now, so much chaff in the wind.

And what was Morse doing? He was far, far more out of place here than he ever had been down at the nick.

“And what about you?” Thursday asked, rounding on Wilding at once.

He looked up lazily from where he sat in his circle of pillows. “I never saw her, man. I was with the band most of the night. I didn’t talk to many of the guests.”

“Hmmmmm,” Thursday said.

Then he turned back to Morse.

“An affair with Lorenz? What makes you say that?” he asked.

“Someone told me. But it . . . It might not be true. After all, Kay isn’t Catholic.”

“What?” Jakes asked, flatly, annoyed by the apparent non-sequitur.

“Catherine. A girl at the party. She told me Ingrid was having an affair with Dr. Lorenz. But she also told me a friend of mine wouldn’t agree to a divorce from her husband because she’s Catholic. But she’s not. I mean. She’s C of E. So, I don’t know how much to rely on her other report, either.”

“Hmmmm,” Thursday said.

But he wanted to say a hundred things more.

_What was are you doing? What are you trying to prove by living like this? Who is it you are you trying to hurt?_

“So, this blonde man she was with . . .” Jakes began. 

“Oh. I don’t know, if they were _together,_ as in together. She didn’t seem particularly to think so.” Morse amended. 

“Why do you say that?”

Morse pursed his mouth and shrugged.

“This is an investigation into a possible murder. You can do better than that, Constable,” Thursday said.

“I don’t . . . I don’t _know,_ ” Morse said. “She said that I . . . and he . . . . They just seemed more of the sort to be casual acquaintances, is all.”

He was holding something, back, dammit. Now, he was just circling around. It wasn’t like Morse. It didn’t sit right. It didn’t sit right at all.

Thursday took out his pipe and lit it with a flash of a match, and then took a few puffs, until the smoke was circling above him.

The others merely watched him in silence as he completed the pantomime, but Thursday didn’t give a damn; the whole business had his blood pressure up.

What he ought to do is haul Morse out of here bodily. If he were Sam, he’d tell him to go straight home and apologize to his mother for worrying her.

But he wasn’t Sam. He hadn't the right, much as he wished it were otherwise. 

And what was this Pagan business? Was this something new? A new name for a new life?

Thursday took a long, angry draw on his pipe, and immediately burst into a violent fit of coughing.

Morse drew himself up and furrowed his brow, watching him sharply, looking at once much more like his old prickly self. 

“You’re not all right, are you,” he said. And again, it was more of a statement than a question.

“I’ve got a bit of metal rattling around in my chest. What do you expect?” Thursday barked. 

“What does the doctor say?” Morse asked.

Thursday cleared his throat as best he could, wiped his mouth with his handkerchief and straightened.

“He says I’m fine.”

“You didn’t _go_ , did you?” Morse snapped, his rounded Northern accent breaking through in his impatience.

“Don’t you start,” Thursday said.

Morse blinked and seemed to take a step back. For a moment, they stood, each looking at the other, as if they had reached an impasse.

And too right. A bit rich it was, for Morse to be so concerned for _him,_ considering that it looked as if Morse had spent half of the last few months falling about on the floor.

Morse ducked his head down, then, and pulled on his ear.

“I would ask the people from her class, if I were you. That’s all I can suggest. I . . . I’m sorry. But . . . She just helped me up. I barely spoke to her. I wasn’t. . . I didn’t see her leave, even.”

And that much, at least, was true. He probably wouldn’t have noticed a herd of pink elephants trumpeting through the place.

“Is that all?” Morse asked, then. Suddenly, he seemed tired somehow, worn thin, as if in another fifteen minutes, he might become as pale and as crisp as a sheet of paper, set to drift away in the wind. 

“We need to know where you’re staying,” Jakes said. “In case we have more questions for you.”

“I told you,” Morse said. “You already grilled that out of me the last time we spoke.”

“Standard procedure, Morse," Jakes said.

“Standard procedure,” Morse said, wonderingly, once again playing the wiseacre. “Right. That’s right. Then you should have asked my name, too, shouldn’t you? It’s Morse, Endeavour. M-O-R-S-E. E-N-D-E-A-V-O-U-R. Do you have that?”

“I know how to spell the word _Endeavour,_ Lonsdale,” Jakes said.

“And as for my address,” Morse said, cutting across him. “I don’t exactly have a formal street address, as you well know.”

“I know where to find him, sergeant,” Thursday said quietly.

Jakes raised his eyebrows, surprised, and Morse grimaced. His words could have meant anything, after all—a warning or a threat or a promise. 

“So. Am I free to go, then? I’m . . . Actually, I’m late. I am supposed to have someone for tea.”

_“Tea?”_ Jakes cried, incredulously.

Thursday couldn’t help but agree, for once, with his sergeant.

How could the lad tell such a ridiculous lie? It seemed as if Morse was about as well-poised to be throwing a formal tea as a horse might walk on the moon.

But Thursday found his heart just wasn’t in the fight. “Yeah,” Thursday said. “Mind how you go.”

Morse went straight to the door then; he didn’t even chance a glance at Nick Wilding, nor did he look at either him or at Jakes as he passed. He just strode by, as if they weren’t there . . . or as if he thought either one or the other of them might take him by the shoulder to stop him as he went, and he was determined not to grant them the opportunity.

Instead, he walked right past them as if he were a ghost, as if he might be able to walk right through them. 

By the time he and Sergeant Jakes were finished wrapping things up with the Wildings and went back outside into the fresh and green summer’s day, bright with trilling birdsong, Morse was already in one of the boats, halfway across the lake—a lone figure, rowing steadily, a figure that looked to be right out of one of those Greek myths the lad was so well-versed in, one of those in which the hero finds he must cross the River Styx, making his solitary way over the mirror-like water, to do battle in a strange and bewildering and hostile world. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 2020, everyone!  
> This is a shorter chapter than usual, I know, but I think I might try for shorter chapters, posted more often, in the new year. :D  
> Thanks for reading!


	6. Fall

Morse pulled the boat up onto the opposite shore, feeling as if he had just escaped some hitherto unknown circle of hell. Then he started walking. He didn’t look back.

Instead, he made straight for the woods, disappearing into a palette of colors that were so familiar, so calming—particularly after all the jumble and confusion of Nick’s enchanted place. It was a world made of dark forest green and gray and earth and burnt umber, a silent world fashioned of only a handful of muted shades.

It was soothing, it was perfect, it was just what he wanted.

But, still, he felt as if something was off, pawing at him, like a tightness between his shoulders.

Something that had to do with the way he had parted with Nick.

Perhaps he had owed Nick more than that, then to leave without a backward glance?

But no.

That was the point of them, really.

Neither owed the other a thing.

And anyway, how else could it be, really, in a world like this? A world in which anything was possible? Any betrayal, any turn of events, any fall? Where one regretful backwards glance leaves Eurydice to dissolve into shadow? Where even beloved Icarus comes crashing down in a torrent of frayed feathers and bone?

Morse shook his head, as if he might shake the memory of the past hour away. As terrible as it was, that collision of worlds, it could have been far worse. At least Thursday and Jakes had let him go. He was grateful for that, at least—so grateful to be free that, even now, safely on the other side of the lake, his heart was still racing beneath his ribs.

He was so grateful that they had let him go.

And he wished they would have stopped him.

He wanted to be left alone, and he wanted someone to stop him, to drag him back, to make him go home.

Because, try as he might, he couldn’t stop himself.

He felt like he was fraying at the edges, like the circles in the paintings of Van Gogh—the circles of fractured gold around a sun, the circles of a scatter of crows in the sky.

And he was going in circles. He had been crashing through the trees with such abandon, that he realized that he lost his way—he literally had lost his way.

He stopped short, his heart still thrashing in his chest like a caged bird, and looked about for some landmark in the midst of the ocean of gray and green.

He sensed it, then, that fierce presence. He felt it in the prickle at the back of his nape.

He froze in his tracks, scarcely daring to breathe.

And so he remained, his chest rising and falling, his breaths as shallow as he could contain them, until he was quite lightheaded, until the shadow of that old fear had passed.

****

By the time Morse made it back to the lake house, he felt so worn thin that, at first, he thought that he must be hallucinating, that he must have finally gone mad. 

His gray, clapboard hovel of a house had been utterly transformed, surrounded by Italian marble urns and fanciful white trellises, all bubbling with flowers—white and golden yellow and pink—cascading like waterfalls of petals around the windows and doors, so that the place seemed to be not so much what it was—a half-abandoned fishing shack—but rather like a fairy-tale cottage in an enchanted wood.

Bixby was outside the door, pacing about impatiently, and Morse found he was glad to see him.

Morse didn’t know Bixby well, but he knew the man was not one to judge. He was just what Morse wanted, just what he needed: someone to be present but not to pry, someone near but not too close.

Not too close.

Bixby, for his part, looked relieved to see him as well, flashing that perfect, graceful smile at him as Morse made his way through the trees.

“I was beginning to be afraid you wouldn’t turn up, old man,” he called.

And then he was eyeing him critically and laughing.

“What the hell happened to you, anyway?” 

Morse shrugged. He knew he must look a state; he didn’t take Bixby’s words personally. Bix’s concern was merely pragmatic. Morse, after all, was only a prop in his little play. If he looked too much of a walking disaster, Kay might be overly concerned.

And then he just might divert Kay’s attention from the main attraction.

But it was true: he really ought to get cleaned up. It turned out, much to his surprise, that he was not as far gone as he might have thought. He had some sense of pride, anyway—enough shame left, at least, to feel a twinge of self-consciousness before Bixby’s most immaculate person. Morse shifted his weight as he stood under Bixby’s fond gaze, feeling vaguely uncomfortable, sticky with Scotch and sex, conscious that he most likely reeked of sandalwood and pot.

The trouble was . . .

Well.

Well, at least he could have a shave.

“I’ll just get cleaned up a bit,” Morse said.

Bixby huffed another laugh. “A _bit?_ ”

Morse ignored him and went up the ramshackle steps—careful to tread lightly on the first one, which was half-rotted—and into the house.

Bixby, feeling no need to stand on ceremony, evidently, followed him right inside.

Inside, the place had been done up in much the same way as without. Everywhere there were tall and elegant vases overflowing with pastel pink and gold flowers, clashing famously with the grayness and earthiness of the little lake house. The old, scarred oak table was decked out with a fresh linen cloth and laden with green and pink and gold cakes, each one every bit as fantastical as the flowers.

Bixby seemed to be scrutinizing Morse’s reaction.

“Is it too much?” he asked.

Morse snorted.

“It’s perfect,” he said.

Bixby frowned, as if trying to work out whether or not Morse’s answer had been sincere. He wasn’t much given to subtleties, Bixby. For all of his style and grace, the man was woefully out of his depths in the crowd he was running in.

Morse might almost feel quite sorry for him, if he had any feelings at all to spare.

Well. He had best get started, as Bixby had said. He honestly had no wish to see Kay, to stand under her scrutiny, as he was.

Morse headed over to the round mirror above the porcelain washbasin next to his bed, took up the soap and the shaving brush, and plunged them into the water, working up the suds, and then lathering up his face. As he ran the razor though the foam, each swipe left behind a trail of fresh skin, smooth and untouched. 

Mmmmm.

If only it were truly that easy.

Bixby paced around as Morse shaved, picking up this and that, chatting about a host of delightful inanities. As Morse had suspected, he was one of those people who talked a lot when they were nervous.

Morse tuned him out for the most part, concentrating on creating one strip of new skin and then another, until he saw, in the mirror’s reflection, that Bixby had taken it upon himself to have a rummage through his records.

Morse glowered at Bixby glacially in the mirror. He generally didn’t allow people to handle them.

“Don’t you have any music?” Bixby asked.

Morse felt his shoulders tense further still.

“Of course, I have music,” he said, sharply.

“You know what I mean, old man.”

“No,” Morse said. “No, I don’t.”

“No need to be tetchy. I just thought. Well. _Opera._ All that screeching and caterwauling. It’s hardly conducive to instilling a sense of romance.”

Morse let out a small cry of protest. “What’s this? Opera is filled with some of the most heart-breaking love stories ever told.” 

“That’s just it. Heart-breaking. Not what I’m going for, is it, now?”

Bixby pulled one album out of the basket and studied the cover thoughtfully, as if perhaps he thought he might have found one at last that met his expectations.

Then he actually took it out of the sleeve.

Morse really ought to throw the man out of the house.

“Make yourself at home,” Morse said.

“Thanks, old man.”

Morse shook his head and went back to his shaving. He didn’t know what was more painful: the fact that his sarcasm had soared entirely over Bixby’s head, or the fact that he, Morse, had fallen into the habit of saying such things, of saying the opposite of what he meant.

That he was becoming one of them. 

Bixby sighed, then, a little mournfully, studying the label on the record.

“I don’t think Kay liked the party the other night,” he said.

Morse rolled his eyes. He was not about to encourage the man if he was planning to be maudlin. He was certainly in no mood to play cheering squad to a millionaire. 

“Of course, she did,” Morse said, bracingly, and he struck the razor against the edge of the basin to knock off the old lather.

“No. I tried to find a band that was like the one that was playing that night at the Belvedere.” He paused, then, and said, “She liked the band playing at the Belvedere. On the night that we met.”

Morse nodded in the mirror, showing that he understood the point.

“But this band wasn’t quite as good. No. She didn’t like it. She didn’t have a good time.”

“If she didn’t have a good time, it didn’t have anything to do with the band,” Morse began. “I would think it would have more to do with . . .”

And then Morse stopped short.

“With what?” Bixby asked.

“Well,” Morse said. “With Bruce.”

Bixby looked greatly heartened by that. Inwardly, Morse winced. He had told himself he wouldn’t involve himself overmuch with whatever love or loss lay between them.

But Bixby was all too willing to pick up the mantle.

“He is boorish beyond all belief, isn’t he? It’s clear that Kay doesn’t love him. That she never loved him.”

Morse said nothing.

Bix set the record on the turntable and then lowered needle. Morse watched him in the mirror. At least he was careful, at least he handled the records he did not have much faith in reverently.

In a moment, the final duet of Verdi’s "Rigoletto" sounded in the small room.

_The curse!_ Rigoletto sung out.

And was he cursed? The fact that Bix should set the needle there, of all places, seemed unfortuitous, made Morse to feel like a hollow thing.

  
_Oh, my dove, you must not leave me!_

_If you go away, I shall be alone!_

_Do not die, or I shall die beside you!_

“Oh God, that’s terrible,” Bixby said. “That’s far, far too much.”

Morse shot another pointed look up into the mirror and, this time, he met Bixby’s eyes in its reflection.

“I thought you were the sort for whom there could never be too much,” he said.

“Well. There can never be too much of a _good_ thing,” Bixby said. “But this . . . This sounds as if the sky and the sun are crashing down. No. Like angels coming down out of the clouds to bring the world to an end. How you can stand to listen to the stuff is quite beyond me.”

He lifted the needle off the record, right as Morse flicked the last of the foam off into the basin with a bit more force than necessary.

“Ah,” Bixby said, seemingly alerted by the sound. “Look at you. You’re a new man already. Quick shower and a change and you’ll be right as rain.”

Morse paused.

“What is it, old man?” Bixby said, astutely.

“Well, the house . . . it’s not equipped with a shower, exactly.”

“It isn’t?”

“Well. Not one that I care to use,” Morse amended. 

He could scarcely bear to go into the cramped box of a camp shower. The lake house was small, but reassuringly so, like a well-worn blanket wrapped around your shoulders . . . that tin-plated shower, however, was like a coffin, like a . . . 

“What?” Bixby asked, his dark eyes shining with amusement, “Have you been bathing in the lake, then?”

Morse shrugged.

“Well, go on,” Bixby said. “Best get a move on before Kay arrives.”

Bixby opened the door to go out, letting a stream of sunlight into the shadowed cottage, but then he stopped, poised on the threshold, when Morse made no move to follow.

“Well come on, then.”

And still, Morse remained where he was.

Bixby huffed a laugh. “What’s this? Middle class prudery? I shall avert my gaze, how is that, old man?” And with that, he sailed out the door, his footballs just as purposeful on his crumbling steps as they would be in a ballroom.

Slowly, Morse gathered up fresh clothes and soap and a towel and followed him outside. When he stepped out into the daylight—blind and blinking against the sudden contrast—he found that Bix had wandered off towards the trees and was looking off into the distance, in the direction of his palace of a house, his hands clasped primly behind his back. 

Morse went down to the edge of the water and hung his fresh clothes over an arching branch. He hesitated once more before undressing, and then—once he felt certain that Bixby planned to stay where he was—he began to peel off his old things, tossing them one by one to the ground.

He walked at once into the lake, and as soon as he was deep enough in, he half-fell into the dark water.

Even in summer, it was bitterly cold—it was a shock, it sobered him up, it sent his aching muscles tingling, reminding him that he was, after all, alive. Above, a few dark clouds had begun to gather, but the sun shone all the brighter for them, the light bursting into a halo, struggling to break through.

Morse took a deep breath and ducked under, and for a few blessed moments, he remained totally immersed, in a world without color or noise, in a world in which the only sound was the music that played on and on in his head. He stayed under for as long as he could, seeping into that fresh coldness, and then he popped up to the surface with a burst of a splash.

He soaped up his hair and then ducked under again, and it was odd, really, the contrast: the cold and the warm and the water and the sun. He wondered, idly, if either might have the power to finally freeze or to melt whatever the hell it was—the apathy, the dullness, the numbness—that seemed to have so settled over him.

Like a curse.

He looked down into the water. Just below the surface, his pale limbs were drifting, light shadows in the dark, so distant they almost felt as if they were not his. Just like the pale, dismembered arm that he had seen floating and . . .

Morse’s breath caught in his throat, and he tore around, making back to the shoreline, rushing for land in a crush of panic and a roar of water.

At the sound, Bixby, instinctively, began to turn around.

“Don’t!” Morse shouted.

“Sorry, old man,” Bix chuckled, turning back to look at the house. “But what on earth are you doing? It sounded quite as if you were being herded by an alligator.”

“There are no crocodilian species native to Britain,” Morse said, waspishly, grabbing at his towel from off the snag of a branch.

“I know that,” Bixby said. “I was speaking figuratively. People do, you know. You know, you really are awfully literal-minded for someone renowned to be so clever.”

Morse snorted. Who had told him such a thing? Obviously, he was hardly clever, for his life to have ended up so, to have . . .

To have ended so.

Morse shook his head and began to towel off his hair.

Bix kept his back turned as Morse dried and dressed—throwing his clothes on so quickly that his white shirt seemed to stick a bit to his skin— so keen was he to be back on an equal footing with his well-turned-out guest.

He needn’t have worried; Bixby, true to his word, kept looking toward his house; he was studying it, appraising it, and suddenly Morse knew that he was imagining it through Kay’s eyes.

Morse pulled on a burgundy jumper and adjusted his tie as best as he could without a mirror, and then ran a hand through his hair in an attempt to smooth it before heading up to join Bixby.

“My house looks well, doesn’t it?” he asked, as Morse approached. “I earned the money to buy it in only three months, you know.”

“Oh?” Morse asked. “What business are you in?”

“That’s my affair,” Bixby said.

On those three words, his voice, usually as smooth as glass, went sharp. Sharp as a rough stone at the bottom of the lake.

Morse took one step back.

Bix shifted his weight, furrowed his brow, as if he knew his response had not been appropriate. As if he knew his mask had slipped. 

He quirked a hint of a smile.

“This and that, old man,” he amended.

“Ah,” Morse said.

Morse looked away, but before he did, he caught just the quirk of another sort of smile on Bixby’s face—a smile quite different from his usual flash, as if some intimacy or some understanding had passed between them.

And from this, Morse was given to understand that Bixby was grateful that Morse had let it go.

Well, of course he had. Who was he to judge? He wasn’t what he said he was, either.

God only knew what Joss Bixby might have thought of making such an error before him, if he knew he was a onetime policeman.

A onetime policeman who had himself just been questioned by the police, not an hour earlier.

Morse was mulling over the irony of it all, when he caught the sound of an engine purring through the trees: Kay’s small white car, trundling up the path.

For the second time that day, Morse was glad that Bix was there. Kay was always bound to catch up with him sooner or later, after all. If he _had_ to endure an inspection of his living conditions, it was best to get it done with while someone else was there to serve as a distraction.

He could almost hear Kay’s voice now.

_“The place is as leaky as a sieve, Pagan. What will you do when winter comes? You certainly can’t stay here, and Tony’s already said that you refused point blank to move up to the main house. What are you planning to do? Have you considered going to Lorimer, seeing if you can’t finish up your degree? What about the police, if you fancied it? You act as if you can’t go back, but you’ve been cleared. It was in all the papers that you were falsely accused, that ACC Deare was stark raving bonkers. Didn’t you know?”_

And on and on.

Funny that Kay seemed so hell-bent on making a project of fixing up his life, considering she had made such a hash of her own.

He watched her car approach warily. What would she think of his interference, now, in her life, of his bringing back to her the specter of years ago?

Well.

Turnabout was fair play, when he thought about it.

He turned to Bixby, curious to see the look on his face now that the long-awaited moment was approaching.

But he was gone.

Morse narrowed his eyes, scanned the spaces between the trees for some hint of his coat. But there was not the slightest trace of him.

It was as if he had been a phantom, or a ghost.

But Morse couldn’t have imagined it all . . . he couldn’t have … he just couldn’t … because the lake house was still a riot of flowers of warm gold and pink against the gray and . . .

And Kay was getting out of her car.

“Pagan,” she called. “You’re home.”

“Yes,” he said.

She took in the ostentatious display of flowers and blooms spilling madly all about the front of his house, then, her face the perfect picture of confusion.

“What’s all this?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

She turned to him, frowning, scrutinizing his face.

“Pagan? Are you alright? Where did you get all this?”

And _was_ he alright? Where had Bixby gone? He had been standing _right_ there, right beside him . . . and he couldn’t possibly have imagined . . . .

Kay went around to the other side of the car and pulled out a picnic hamper. “I’ve been by several times, but you weren’t home,” she said, “Do you have anything in?”

And Morse said nothing.

“Pagan?”

Because how in the hell to answer that?

_I have lots of cake?_

Kay frowned and walked smartly from the car, and then, just like Bix, went straight up the steps of the lake house and waltzed right in. Morse scowled and went to follow.

It might be only a shack in the woods, but it was, for now at least, his home. They might show some respect for his privacy.

As soon as they went into the house, Kay burst out laughing, a laugh that sounded like the tinkle of bells. She spun around.

“Pagan? What have you been . . .”

And then her smile faltered and died, and her blue eyes widened, as if she had seen a ghost.

“It’s you,” she breathed.

“Hello, Kay,” Bixby said, from his place on the threshold of the door.

******

It was awkward as hell.

Morse had overestimated Bixby. Bix was not half so smooth and composed as he would have imagined. He and Kay sat in two straight wooden chairs, as still as two statues, barely looking at one another.

“We haven’t met in many years,” she said.

“Five years,” he said.

“We were at the Belvedere.”

“I own it now.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

He might have said, I bought it because it was where we met. I bought it so that I might walk through it, at any hour of the day and night, and remember you. I bought it because, even after all of these years, when I close my eyes, I can still breathe the scent of your perfume, lingering about the place, like the ghost of the past, the ghost of my golden girl. 

And all the things that went unspoken.

One magical night.

Could the spell cast by such a night endure for five years?

“As soon as I saw you, I knew,” Bixby said, at last.

Kay blinked, and when Morse looked at her, he saw that her eyes were heavy with tears.

“And then I had to go. I was . . .”

Getting married. She didn’t say the words, but Morse supplied them for her in his head.

And what were they thinking?

It was just as he told Nick. You couldn’t turn back the clock. Kay had made her choice. If she had not been brave enough the first time, to cast away the promise of a life of ease on Lake Silence, would she be now, after five years of investment in it? After five years of marriage and a daughter?

Of course, it would be easy to argue that Kay might no longer love Bruce. He certainly had not been faithful. But even then, when she married him, Kay must have known, somewhere in that place where she was most honest with herself, that Bruce would prove in the end to be nothing more than a serial philanderer.

She most likely knew she was making a mistake when she married him. And like all reckless people, she closed her eyes and plunged ahead anyway.

But did she regret it? It was clear from the tears that stood like stars in her eyes that she did.

Morse chanced a glance at Bixby, who didn’t seem to dare to look Kay full in the face. It was as if he didn’t quite believe that the moment he had waited for was actually happening, it was as if he was lost in a dream.

Well, of course, he was. Bixby was a man who built his life on dreams.

But what are dreams, after all?

Visions that, upon waking, flee like the shadows of rolling clouds over a moonlit lawn. The more we reach for them, the more quietly they slip away, dissolving into birdsong and yellow morning light.

Five years of dreaming.

Morse suddenly felt a growing sense of horror, watching Kay tottering on her pedestal, watching Bixby slowly realizing that all he had ever wanted in life was falling steadily within his grasp.

And now what?

It was excruciating, it was like watching some disaster waiting to happen, like watching a car veering wildly out of control, ready to strike whatever or whoever fell into its path.

“I have to go,” Morse said.

They both looked up at him, in hope and alarm. They wanted him to go, and yet they didn’t.

“Go?” Kay asked.

“Yes,” Morse said.

He grabbed a book from off the table by the armchair where the ghost of Thursday still remained.

“I told Tony I would bring him this book. I’ll just run up to the . . .”

Kay laughed. “A _book?_ Since when does Tony read anything?”

“He wants to read this one. He told me. I promised I’d bring him up.”

And how had he gotten to be such a good liar?

“That? A Greek grammar and rhetoric?”

“Yes,” Morse said.

Although from the look on Kay’s face, perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps he was a terrible liar.

“I’ll be back in a half hour or so,” Morse said, and, before either of them could say another word, he was halfway to the door.

*****

Morse stood under a spreading fir tree for a long time, repenting of what he had done.

Although why he should have such a sense of foreboding, he could not say. Was it that song, that Bixby had chosen, so inadvertently?

He stood until the clouds gathered, and a shower of rain began to fall.

He stood until the rain began to beat like the roll of a drum, hard enough to find him through the branches.

And then, slowly, he went back up to the house.

When he walked back up through the doorway, he found Kay and Bixby sitting face to face, still in the two chairs by his small table, speaking in murmurs, as if a spell had fallen between them.

They looked . . . happy.

It was a fragile sort of happiness, as if they dare not embrace it fully, lest it break. But happy all the same.

Morse felt his conscience ease, but then he felt another pang of regret: this time, at having interrupted them.

But he needn’t have worried: their happiness was such that it seemed to swell, to spill over, to be large enough to take in all the wide world around them.

They both smiled at him broadly, as if they never realized just how very fond they were of him.

“Let’s go to the house. I want to show Kay around, properly,” Bixby said.

“Are you sure you want me to come, too?” Morse said.

“Absolutely, old man.”

Morse would have stayed where he as all the same, but Bix put a hand on his shoulder as he was passing through the door, all but scooping him along into their pageant, of love or of heartbreak, Morse couldn’t say.

****

Bixby led them through the house, as eager as a schoolboy, delighted to have a captive audience as he showed off the many extravagances of the wonderland he had created, there in the somber woods of Oxfordshire.

“Oh, Joss,” Kay breathed, “It’s absolutely beautiful,” and Bixby seemed to glow under her praise, to radiate with happiness.

“Let’s rouse up Klipspringer,” Bixby said. We’ll have music.”

Morse rolled his eyes upon hearing the name. Klipspringer was Bixby’s eccentric border, rumored to be some descendent of Beethoven’s, although Morse rather doubted this.

“Eat, drink and be merry,” Morse said, wryly.

“That’s right,” Bixby said, failing for the second time that day to recognize sarcasm when he heard it. “As the fellow said, you only get one go around the board, am I right, old man?”

Morse said nothing, only hummed noncommittally, but later, he had to admit, Klipspringer, did play exceedingly well.

Kay took Morse's hand and pulled him onto the carpet on the conservatory floor, and, in a few minutes, it felt as if they _had_ turned back the clock, in a few moments, they were dancing just like they had in her rooms at Lady Matilda’s, back when they would spend an evening practicing for some gala or another—some event where two scholarship students might find themselves utterly over their heads—so that they would not disgrace themselves in front of Susan and Bruce.

As they turned and spun, their self-consciousness dropped away, and they weren’t half bad, really.

That was all down to Kay: she was naturally graceful, made everyone look good. And soon they were laughing, just like they had all those years ago.

But then the spell was broken, and Morse felt a shiver, like a pair of eyes were on him, like the unease he so often felt out in the woods.

He stopped in place and looked up to see Bixby’s dark and solemn gaze, watching him with an odd sort of intensity.

There was a look there that Morse couldn’t quite read.

Nor did he have the chance to, because, in the next moment, Bixby looked away.

But there was something curious there. Something different.

It wasn’t until later, much later, that Morse realized why.

It had been the first time that he had ever met Bixby’s eyes, that Bixby had been the first to look away. 

***

Jakes and Thursday walked through the tall grass, back to where the black Jag sat waiting in front of Maplewick Hall, beneath a spreading chestnut tree.

“So. We going to see this Dr. Lornez then?” Jakes asked, opening the driver’s side door. 

“I thought we might start with the group Miss Hjort was with from the night school,” Thursday replied.

They settled into their seats then, and Jakes raised his eyebrows as he started the ignition.

“You don’t agree, sergeant?”

“Well, sir. If Ingrid was telling people at the party that Dr. Lorenz had been in a bit of temper, he obviously was on her mind. Far more than you would think a mere employer might be. If they were having any sort of affair . . .”

He shrugged one lean shoulder, as if reluctant to say more.

“Sounds as if he was in a brown study over his research,” Thursday countered. “And Morse seemed to think that talk of an affair was only idle gossip.”

Jakes snorted softly. “You really trust Morse’s judgment in this?”

Underneath his words, Thursday heard the tempered strain of disillusionment.

_I’m the one who stayed. I’m your bagman. Even now, you still put more weight on Morse’s opinion than on mine?_

Thursday stretched out his legs, eased further back in his seat.

They didn’t have much to go on. It didn’t matter in what order they got their answers. As long as they got _something._

“All right, then,” Thursday said. “We’ll try the lab first. It’s as good a place to start as any.”

Once they got to the lab, however, they found that Dr. Lorenz was not in.

“Sorry,” a young lab technician said. “You just missed him. He’s at a lunch with our patron, with the man who is funding much of our research. He should be back by four, if you’d like to talk to him.”

“We would,” Thursday replied. “And, just as a matter of interest, we’ve had some report that Dr. Lorenz has had a spot of trouble of late, a setback with his research?”

“Oh,” the technician said. “Yes, some bottles of tiger urine have gone missing.”

“ _Tiger_ urine?” Jakes asked.

“Yes, that’s right. We’re conducting a study into the neurobiology of chemical communication in mammals.”

“How’s that?” Jakes asked.

The lab assistant shrugged. “It’s all quite simple, really. A dog, for example, cocks its leg against a lamppost. We’re looking at the composition of what it leaves behind, what chemical information might be contained in such material.”

“I see,” Thursday said. “Well. Thank you for your time. We’ll be back in a few hours.”

“I’ll tell Dr. Lorenz to expect you when he comes in.”

“Mmmm,” Thursday said.

Thrusday hadn’t expected much out of Lorenz to begin with, and now, he expected even less so, having heard that his bad temper of late had been over a few missing bottles of tiger piss. Hardly the stuff of a torrid love affair.

But there was one thing worth taking away from the visit.

The missing sample was from a tiger.

An odd coincidence, that.

But there couldn’t actually be a tiger in Oxford, could there? If one had gone missing, from a circus or a private zoo say, surely someone must have noticed, reported it missing. 

It felt like a betrayal to Jakes, but it was at times like this that Thursday missed Morse more than ever. It was a real joy, seeing the lad pull some sort of connection out of thin air, like a rabbit out of a top hat, however off-the-wall.

He was sure that Morse would have leapt on that odd coincidence, on the link between DeBryn’s theories about the death of Ricky Parker and the nature of Dr. Hector Lorenz’s research. Morse would have been sure to have pulled something out of his sleeve, some revelation about an esoteric West African cult or an overlooked linguistic twist that would reveal all . . .

Or at least _something._

“I wouldn’t be any use to you,” Morse had said, and Thursday snorted at the memory of it.

Truer words were never spoken, the state he’d fallen into. Back at the Wildwood’s place, Thursday had been tempted—more than tempted—to throw Morse in the back of the Jag and drag him back to Oxford.

Morse wasn’t use to anyone, the way he was carrying on, much less to himself.

Or perhaps he was.

Because it was over at the night school, just as Morse had said, where they found another connection.

The Spanish teacher there, Joshua Bryden, divulged to them that Ingrid had dated a boy there, in the class, a boy named Phillip Hathaway.

Who happened to be a groundkeeper at Crevecoeur Hall.

Crevecoeur Hall.

So. Their enquiries were taking them right back to Lake Silence. Right back to where a search team, even now, was scouring the woods for any clues of what might have happened to Ingrid Hjort.

Or for her remains, if it was the case that she had gone the way of Ricky Parker.

No. He couldn’t think of that. Couldn’t lose hope yet.

It felt as if they were going in circles, but it felt too, perhaps, as if they were finally getting there: to the heart of the darkness that had fallen over the woods around the lake.

Thursday had felt it, all along, that it would be at Lake Silence that they would find their answers.

And they had to soon. Otherwise, who might be next to go missing?

It might even be Morse who would be the next to fall, wandering around in those woods the way he did, drunk or worse.

Or perhaps, such a fall was just what Morse had been planning, all along.

Perhaps, in a way, he already had.

But no. Ah, no. He couldn’t think of that. Couldn’t lose hope yet.

For the second time that day, Jakes took the turn leading through the dark fir trees, right to where they had begun. And Thursday couldn’t escape the feeling, niggling somewhere at the back of his nape, that it was, indeed, only the beginning.


	7. Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thursday and Jakes inquire into the disappearance of Ingrid Hjort; Morse finds himself over his head at Maplewick Hall

As soon as he and Jakes pulled up in front of the great house that was Crevecoeur Hall, Thursday was struck at once by the young woman sitting out front, positioned dead center on a flight of towering stone steps. The wide flare of her spring green skirt, her pale face and auburn hair, and the long trail of red wool that she held in her hands were the only sparks of color and softness about the place, which looked to be a veritable fortress of hard, cold granite.

Sitting there, halfway up into the sky, she looked to be one of the loneliest people Thursday had ever happened upon—almost otherworldly, like some mythical figure, working a skein of blood-red wool in her hands—like the girl who had challenged Artemis to a weaving contest.

Or was it Athena?

Thursday couldn’t quite remember.

But Morse would know.

Morse.

Thursday scowled at the thought of him.

Morse, too, seemed to be dissolving, transforming right before his eyes from a flesh and blood young man—one brimming with contradictions and complexities—into a mere archetype: the wanderer in the woods, the lone figure making his solitary way across a body of water that divided two worlds—the world of the here and now, and the odd sort of Neverland that he had made for himself out on the edge of Lake Silence.

It was wrong, all wrong.

Thursday snorted impatiently through his nose at the thought of it. But, then that—just that—that odd intake of breath—was enough to send him into a fit of brutal coughing, one that pounded at his ribs with the force of a jackhammer.

Jakes, in the seat beside him, kept his hands on the wheel and remained looking straight ahead, pointedly pretending that he didn’t notice that his gov’nor was shaking to pieces a mere arm’s reach away.

That he was an old man cracking apart, past his prime, best taken out to pasture.

Thursday cleared his throat with a final sharp bark and swallowed against the grate of the loose bullet that shifted under his ribs, against that stinging sharpness in his chest.

The only solution was to keep busy, to keep such thoughts of Morse and of bits of metal that threatened to pierce his heart at bay, to keep his mind on the case.

Because never in his life had Thursday felt so off his game.

He cleared his throat once more, and then, with little fanfare, he swung his legs out of the car and started off toward front of the house. Quietly, Jakes slipped from behind the wheel and followed.

Thursday headed up the steps at a steady clip, but soon he found he was strangely out of breath.

Damn, but the things were steep.

Although Jakes, beside him, seemed to take them almost two at a time, knees sharp beneath his crisp black trousers, bounding up at a brisk pace—and, indeed, Jakes almost nearly surpassed him, but then he had the good sense to hang back, careful not to show Thursday up, careful not overtake his guv’nor.

Hmph. Too right.

The young woman on the steps watched them as they approached, but made no move to stand. It was as if she was surveying them from far away, as if from some distant shore.

It must be odd to be alone here, knocking about in a house so big. Thursday found he didn’t envy her in the slightest.

His own house seemed the perfect size, now that he thought about it: each of the four of them had space enough to themselves, but yet, at the same time, there was always someone within ear shot.

_“Sam! Come and set the table.”_

_“Joan? Have you seen my jacket?”_

In a place like this, a body could call for someone to help them adjust the television aerial and get no response whatsoever.

“Good afternoon, Miss,” Thursday called as he approached the young woman, mindful to keep the crackle of his recent bout of coughing out of his voice. “Detective Inspector Thursday, City Police.”

The young woman surveyed him with cool, hazel eyes.

“Georgina Mortmaigne,” she replied as she rose at last, extending her hand.

“We’re looking for a Philip Hathaway,” Thursday said.

“Why?” she asked, at once. “Is he in trouble?”

“Not so far as I know, Miss. He might be able to help us with our enquiries.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well. Please. This way.”

She turned and led them up the remaining steps and through the wide double doors of the house.

As soon as Thursday stepped into the place, he had a sense that something was off, felt it in his water. Although why that should be, he could not say.

Compared to the other homes around Lake Silence that he had the occasion to frequent on police business, Crevecoeur Hall looked for all the world to be nothing more nor less than the perfectly respectable ancestral seat of one of Oxfordshire’s leading families—calm and sedate and orderly, the air slightly chilled and smelling of lilac and cleaning wax.

There was none of the chaos and psychedelic claptrap of Maplewick Hall here, nor none of the glitz and glamor of Bixby’s. No guitars leaning against antique kissing seats, no tossed books strewn about, no roulette wheels in the drawing room, no opulence of colored lights.

There were few signs of life at all, in fact.

Here, the large, empty rooms were furnished with heavy, gilt mirrors that seemed to reflect only the nothingness, with sedate oil paintings in melancholy tones, and with perfectly-placed pieces of dark mahogany furniture, all arranged and angled just so, for show rather than for comfort.

The only thing that stuck an odd chord were the large animal heads that adorned the walls—the heads of lions and antelopes with curving horns and wildebeests—trophies from a safari, no doubt.

Thursday grimaced. He didn’t see the sport in it, himself. Macabre, it was, to kill things so beautiful. It was a rich man’s game, he supposed. Only those who felt so insulated from danger and death might be tempted to seek it out, might find in such pursuits some sort of thrill, some reminder that they were alive.

Thursday, for one, needed no such reminding. He knew all too well that death lay around every corner.

Saw it nearly every day, on the job. 

Georgina Mortmaigne’s footsteps echoed through the cavernous rooms, until at last, their path led them to another human being, a gruff-looking man with a graying dark beard who stood by a window, thumbing through pages in a binder.

“This is Geoff Craven, our land agent,” Miss Mortmainge said. 

“Afternoon,” the man said, eyeing them with interest.

“These gentlemen are from the police. They’re looking for Phillip,” Miss Mortmaigne explained.

Craven’s dark eyes narrowed, went sharp.

“Oh? Is the lad in trouble?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Thursday said. “We just have a few questions for him.”

The man nodded, then, tersely.

“This way,” he said.

****

Craven took them to the edge of a sprawling garden that was built like a gigantic maze, one made of row after row of knee-high, perfectly-edged rectangles and diagonals of green boxwood, punctuated with spikes of purple and white foxglove, like small turrets, reaching for the sky.

Thursday felt like a damn fool, making his way through the thing. He was quite tempted to just step over the blasted little hedges, all laid out in far more complicated a manner than was necessary, all trimmed up just for a bit of showing off.

But the long trek _did_ serve to give Thursday ample time to consider his quarry. Both Miss Mortmaigne and Mr. Craven had been rather quick off the mark in assuming that Hathaway might be in some sort of trouble, a pattern that gave Thursday pause.

But, as he and Jakes approached, the young man looked up, leaning on his shovel, watching them with a frank and open curiosity. If the lad had something to hide, he certainly didn’t show it.

“Philip Hathaway?” Thursday asked, as they drew up to where the young groundskeeper stood. 

“Yeah?”

“Detective Inspector Thursday,” Thursday intoned, with a flash of his warrant card. “Oxford City Police. “We’re hoping to ask you a few questions. About Ingrid Hjort.”

Hathaway leaned heavier on his shovel, blinking in the sun, looking perplexed.

“Ingrid? What about her?”

“When’s the last time you saw her, for starters,” Jakes said.

Hathaway shrugged. “Just last night. At a party up at Maplewick Hall. A group of us from the night school went after class.” 

“Where was the last place you saw her at this party? Who was she with?” Jakes asked.

Hathaway frowned, his pale blue eyes narrowing in the bright light. “She went off with a group out on the patio. Said she needed some air, said she’d had enough of the party. She had a row with some woman at the bar. Put her in a tetchy mood.”

“A row?” Jakes asked, at once. He lit up a cigarette and tool a drag, considering Hathaway coolly. “With who? What woman?”  


“I dunno, do I?” Hathaway said. “I mean, I don’t know her name. But . . . well . . . ”

And here, the young man lowered his voice.

“I suppose she’s Lord Belborough’s mistress," he said. "That’s how I heard it, anyway.”

“Hmmmm. And what did they row about?” Thursday asked.

Again, Hathaway shrugged one shoulder, as if the matter held little interest to him.

“They just don’t get on. That one woman is just a bit chippie, is all. Doesn’t like the way Ingrid looked at her once, I s'pose.”

“And how is that?” Thursday asked. 

“Well. Don’t get me wrong. Ingrid’s a great girl. She’s got class, she does. Belborough’s mistress, well, that’s just how she is: she drinks too much, starts rows. Truth is, Ingrid most likely _did_ give her a sour look once.”

Thursday nodded, duly noting the lad’s easy use of the present tense in speaking of Ingrid.

It was a small thing, but it was astounding how often a killer, when asked about a missing person, would slip up, slip into referring to the victim as if he or she were already only the mere shadow of a memory.

“Someone said that you and she . . .” Jakes began, then, letting the sentence trail off suggestively.

“Me and Ingrid?” the boy asked, with a laugh. And it was an open one, a good-humored one, matching his earnest face.

No. Thursday didn’t see it. He was sure that this was not their man.

“No,” Hathaway said. “We went for a drink once, when class first started, but it didn’t go nowhere,” he said.

He shook his head of slicked-back, flaxen hair, then, as if annoyed with himself. 

“Anywhere,” he corrected. “She was just keen on making friends, you know, with people her own age, that was all. Seeing as she’s from Denmark and didn't know anyone here except for her boss and his kids. I did sort of hope, but . . . well. That’s the way it goes.”

“And that’s that,” Jakes said, the slightest edge of disbelief in his voice.

“She seemed to think so,” Hathaway laughed, seeming genuinely amused. “Last night she was flirting with some bloke right while she was sitting next to me. Some bloke who was so far gone he couldn’t even manage to set himself on a _barstool._ Fell right on the floor beside us. _‘You have beautiful eyes,_ ’ she told him. So I guess that’s me answered, in case I had any doubt.”

Jakes shot Thursday a look from under his heavy brows, and Thursday grimaced, remembering Morse’s hesitation in relating the events of the party when he and Jakes had questioned him at that pavilion, at Nick Wilding’s so-called “Enchanted Place,” out at Maplewick Hall.

_“So, this blonde man she was with . . .” Jakes began._

_“Oh. I don’t know, if they were together, as in "together." She didn’t seem particularly to think so.” Morse amended._

_“Why do you say that?”_

_Morse pursed his mouth and shrugged._

_“This is an investigation into a possible murder. You can do better than that, Constable,” Thursday said._

So, Morse had been embarrassed to pop out with that little tidbit, had he?

Funny, that they should have found him in such a state, rumpled and disheveled and reeking of Scotch, and yet still Morse was prim and prickly enough to be reluctant to disclose the fact that a girl who had found him drunk on the floor had told him some soppy thing or another.

Ah, Christ, but the lad was a piece of work.

“Didn’t that make you angry?” Jakes asked Hathaway, then. “Her telling some bloke such a thing, right in front of you?” 

Hathaway’s face clouded, falling for the first into lines of uncertainty; he was such an innocent, that it was only now that he had cottoned on to the idea that he might be under some sort of suspicion.

“No. Of course not. She’s out of my league, like I said. I knew that.”

“What about her employer, Dr. Lorenz? Did she ever mention him?” Jakes fired off, scarcely giving the lad the chance to switch gears.

So. Jakes was back on Lorenz, was he? The man seemed stuck in his craw, that was certain.

Thursday couldn’t help but wonder if it was because Morse had so blithely dismissed the idea—dismissed any rumor that Lorenz might be having an affair with Ingrid—as just one more unfounded bit of Lake Silence gossip.

_“I would ask the people from her class, if I were you," Morse said. "That’s all I can suggest. I . . . I’m sorry. But . . . She just helped me up. I barely spoke to her. I wasn’t . . . I didn’t see her leave, even.”_

If Morse had pointed them toward Lorenz, Jakes would have said, no, let’s make our inquiries at the night school.

“I heard her say he’s been in a mood lately," Hathaway said. "Trouble at work, I think."

That missing tiger piss. There it was again. Buggar that.

“What are they like to work for, the Mortmaignes?” Thursday asked.

The Mortmaignes, on the other hand . . . the cool way that young woman looked right through them, the beheaded animals, perfect in death, the silence… the place was bloody well enough to give a grown man a decided sense of unease, and that was the truth of it.

“They’ve been alright to me.”

“What about Craven, the land agent?” Thursday asked.

“He’s not _really_ a land agent. They just call him that for . . . well, something to call him, really. Bosses me about mostly.”

“And you don’t like that?” Jakes asked.

Hathaway snorted. “Do you?”

Jakes looked at him, his eyes narrowed, contemplating that bit of lip.

And then Hathaway’s face grew more serious still. “You think . . . you think something’s happened to her, don’t you? To Ingrid?”

“She never turned up home, it seems. Her employer reported her missing this morning,” Thursday intoned.

The young man’s eyes went wide.

“You don’t think. . . .?” he began.

“Think what?” Jakes asked.

“Well .... the beast of Binsley?”

Jakes took a long draw of his cigarette and shook his head in contempt.

“Beast of Binsley?” Thursday asked.

“Bit of a local legend,” Jakes replied.

“No, but . . .” Hathaway swallowed, his fair face looking even paler in the sharp sunlight. “I heard. I mean. It’s all anyone can talk about, isn’t it? What happened to Ricky Parker?”

Jakes tossed his cigarette into the immaculate rows of the knee-high maze and began to turn away, a look of impatience contorting his thin face, as if he had heard all that he had the slightest interest in hearing.

Hathaway, in the meanwhile, was still looking stunned.

“I hope you find her,” he said. “You should ask some of the girls from class. They might have seen where she went. I had assumed they all got a cab back together. Clarise and Tonya. I don’t know their last names, but . . .”

“Thank you,” Thursday said. “We’ll do that.”

****

Thursday and Jakes headed back to the Jag, wondering if there might be time to look up this Clarise and Tonya before checking back into the lab to see Dr. Lorenz at four o'clock.

But, as soon as they got into the car, they learned that there wasn’t.

The clock had run out.

It had run out, in fact, before they had even started their inquiry.

As soon as they closed the doors of the Jag, Sergeant Tyler was hailing them on the car radio. A bird watcher, a Professor Moxem, an ornithologist from up at one of the colleges, had stumbled upon the remains of a body in the woods around Lake Silence. One that looked to be of a young woman. A young woman who perfectly matched the description of Ingrid Hjort.

****** 

Jakes and Thursday stood side by side at the lake's edge, the water lapping gently at the shore, as Dr. DeBryn went about his grim work.

It was definitely Ingrid.

Or what remained of her, anyway.

Thursday had seen some things during the war that he knew in his soul he would never forget, things that would be emblazoned blood-red on some damaged synapse of his mind forever.

But scarcely anything like this.

Who or what could have done such a thing… left a girl so . . . mangled?

“It looks like she was killed late last night,” Dr. DeBryn said. “Between the hours of midnight and three.”

They were too late. They had always been too late.

Thursday turned away. And, as he did so, he noticed something on the ground, something white, half-buried in the leaves of the forest floor.

A blood-soaked handkerchief. 

He reached down slowly and picked it up. It was embroidered with two initials in blue silk thread.

_HL_

Hector Lorenz.

Lorenz.

Morse had been off, after all. Far off.

Well. Of course, he was.

“I want to talk to Dr. Lorenz,” Thursday said. “Now.” 

****

It was all painful as hell, the worse bungle that Thursday had ever been a party to.

The meeting Dr. Lorenz had been at? The one that the lab assistant told them that Lorenz was attending, when they had stopped by on inquiry, the meeting with the patron who was funding Lorenz’s research? 

It had been right at Crevecoeur Hall.

They must have just missed him.

Or, even worse, it was possible that Dr. Lorenz might have even been there all along, holed up with Georgina Mortmainge’s brother Guy in his study, even at the very moment that he and Jakes had been out in the garden, standing amidst the maze of green boxwood and purple and white foxglove, questioning Philip Hathaway.

Why hadn’t he thought to simply ask? Why had he not asked the lab assistant where exactly Lorenz had gone? 

Thursday snorted. Wasn’t as if Jakes did any better. What was a bagman for, if not to be a fresh pair of eyes, an extra pair of ears to pick up the things that went unsaid?

Christ, he was off his game. They both of them were.

Something had been not right for months.

Nothing had been right since that night at Blenheim Vale.

Although how might have they had guessed? What sort of business would a posh, Lake Silence family have with a research biologist studying _tiger urine_ of all things? What was Lorenz doing out there anyway?

“Certain specimens had disappeared from his laboratory,” Guy Mortmaigne said, from behind his desk in his study at Crevecoeur Hall.

“And what business would that be of yours?” Thursday asked.

“Dr. Lorenz is the Mortmaigne Chair. The family has been donating to the university for years. We’ve been funding his research.”

“Into what?” Jakes asked.

“A breeding program for endangered species. Exploring the possibilities of artificial insemination. It’s expensive work. Opening the park will bring in vital revenue."

“Opening the _park_?” Jakes asked incredulously.

“I plan to turn Crevecoeur into a nature reserve," Guy Mortmainge said. "A safari park.”

And there it was. The connection. Those animal head trophies. Research into big cats. 

“Are there any wild animals at Crevecoeur now?” Thursday asked sharply.

“No,” Guy Mortmainge said. “My parents liked to keep one or two cubs about the place when we were younger.”

“What sort of cubs?”

“Lion, tiger, cheetah. A panther, once. But they were all reintroduced into the wild a long time ago.”

Thursday frowned, mulling this over. It certainly accorded with what Dr. DeBryn had to say about Ricky Parker and Ingrid Hjort’s injuries.

But if there were a tiger roaming the woods around Lake Silence, surely someone would have seen it? It would be a difficult thing, after all, to miss.

Perhaps the killer was someone who wanted to make it to _look_ as if it had been a tiger, someone who knew about Crevecoeur’s history, someone who thought that it might make for a clever blind?

Who they needed to speak to was Dr. Lorenz. But four o’clock came and went, and, still, the man did not turn up at his laboratory. By seven, the neighbor who had been sitting with his kids after school since the disappearance of Ingrid had called the station.

It seemed that Dr. Lorenz had gone missing.

Whether he was the culprit, and had done a runner, or was the next victim, Thursday wasn’t sure.

He wasn’t sure of anything.

But . . . a _tiger_ in _Oxford?_

No.

That was impossible.

Surely, someone would have seen, would have reported such a thing.

*****

Kay, Bixby and Morse walked along the path that led back to the lake house, back to where Kay’s little white car sat parked amidst the dark, spreading fir trees. It wouldn’t be much longer before Kay would be missed; She and Bruce had made plans to have dinner that night at Crevecouer Hall, and Bruce would soon be wondering where she had gone.

Kay stopped in front of the ramshackle lake house—still festooned with pink and pale gold flowers, now wilting slightly in the sun—and took both of Bixby’s broad hands in hers, holding them tightly, as if reluctant to leave him, while Morse stood off to the side, feeling awkward as hell, the proverbial third wheel.

But it was all right. It was far better to keep himself off at some distance, to try to render himself invisible, lest Kay start pressing him to come along to dinner with her. 

But he needn’t have worried.

He was safe for now.

All thoughts of him had been eclipsed. Kay moved almost as if she were in a dream, stepping closer to Bixby, looking up into his face. It was as if she feared that by leaving she might break the spell, that he might disappear the moment she turned her head.

It was with concentrated effort that she pulled away at last, as if she were fighting Bixby’s gravitational pull, as if she were a cool white moon breaking from its orbit.

She turned and walked to her car, each step slow with regret, and then she drove away without another word.

What was there to say, after all, to make up for all the time they had lost?

Five lost years.

Bixby stood and watched until every trace of the white car had disappeared through the trees, his dark eyes filled with longing. Once it was clear that Kay was gone, Morse expected Bixby to turn away, to make his way back up to his palace of a house on the other side of the stand of fir trees, his shoulders carrying the weight of his sorrow as he went.

But, instead, he hung about the place, looking to Morse hopefully, as if waiting to be invited in.

But Morse said nothing.

Once it was obvious that no invitation was forthcoming, Bixby asked, “Won’t you come with me back up to the house? Stay for a bit longer, old man?”

“No,” Morse said. “No. I really should be going.” 

And then he headed down the path, and off into the shadowed and dappled woods. 

It was with real regret that Bixby watched him go, and Morse understood all too well why—he understood that Bixby was merely grasping at straws, that he simply didn’t want to find himself suddenly alone.

But Morse was anxious to get out amidst the trees again, to put some distance between himself and the pair of them.

It had been a strain, of sorts, spending the afternoon with Kay and Bixby.

He had never spent a day with two people who gave every sign of being utterly in love, and yet still felt himself immersed in such a cold rain of loneliness.

There were moments when the charge between Bixby and Kay resonated like magic, so that Morse found himself believing that perhaps love—and all of those other intangibles that Nick so often spoke of—were, after all, possible.

That love was real, the only real thing in the world.

Then, something rather too forced, too theatrical would steal into their smoldering glances and tearful smiles, and Morse would change his mind once more.

It was all smoke and mirrors.

Just a game.

And then Morse wanted nothing more than to get away from the both of them.

Morse walked along a wooded path, putting Kay and Bixby further and further behind him, until he came out amidst the grass, until he approached a set of small rowboats that lay cast upon the shore.

What better place to get away from all the artifice than a place that openly proclaimed itself to be just that?

In this world, after all, owning up to the lie was the closest thing one could get to honesty.

Morse rowed across the lake quickly and then climbed out onto the opposite shore, making his way through the tall and rippling summer grass to Nick’s garden pavilion. Morse could see at once, as he approached, that it was quiet and obviously deserted, but that was all right.

Nick would be along, sooner or later. Morse could wait.

Wasn’t as if he had any other pressing engagements.

Morse opened the door and went inside, and the place was in and of itself a comfort, a balm against the loneliness. There was a lived-in feel to it—in the chaos of the crimson and burnt-umber cushions, in the books laid-face down to mark the place, in the glasses sitting out as if waiting to be filled with wine—all giving off the impression that someone had just left, or that someone _might_ be returning at any moment.

Morse loosened his sky-blue tie with one finger, pulled it off so that it slithered like a silk snake from around his neck, and then tossed it aside.

He toed off his shoes and laid down, stretching himself out amidst the pillows, and closed his eyes.

He meant only to rest them for a moment, but he must have drifted off somehow. Because the next thing he knew, it was dark, and there was low laughter rolling in his ears.

Morse looked up, and Nick was there, coming in through the door, holding a few items in his hands, only his pale face and the shimmer of his eyes plainly visible in the half-light.

“Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon,” Nick said.

He deposited the items in his hands on a low table in an unceremonious heap and then reached to snap on a lamp with a narrow glass globe, bathing the place in a warm orange but eerie glow.

Morse sat up from the crimson pillows, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. He had never quite combed his hair properly after bathing that afternoon in the lake, and now, having slept, he could feel that waves of it seemed to be turned in all the wrong directions, standing up on end, twisted about, as if he was still underwater.

And then the thought hit him.

When he had plunged underneath the surface of the lake earlier that day, allowing his body to be permeated with the cold and with the numbness . . .

Perhaps he had lingered too long.

Perhaps he was still there. Perhaps he had drowned. Perhaps he only _imagined_ that he sat here amongst silk cushions, while all the while, his body lay lifeless in the dark chill waters, as lifeless as that pale and disembodied arm.

Morse shook his head.

It was a ridiculous thought, really. Mad. He didn’t believe in such things as spirits. How could he possibly _be_ one?

The only way he could be imagining that he was here, in Nick’s enchanted place, was if he truly was.

“What are you thinking about?” Nick asked.

“Nothing,” Morse said.

Nick shrugged and settled down across from him, a satisfied smile on his face.

Morse had thought that Nick might be annoyed with him, distant, considering the abrupt manner in which he had left his company earlier that day, after being questioned by Thursday and Jakes.

But no. Nick seemed to have forgotten all about it. Or, at least he didn’t seem to take it personally. Instead, he looked as happy as a cat in cream.

“You looked pleased,” Morse observed.

“Had a good session, didn’t we?” Nick said, pouring out a glass of wine. “They loved it.”

“Loved what?”

“New song I wrote.”

He reached toward the small table and lifted one of the items he had dumped there when he had come in. It was a large reel of tape. He held it aloft, beaming with pride. 

“Spender taped a demo for us. We’re gonna record it next week, for real, in London.”

“Ah.”

Nick had been on the outs with Ken and the others, lately, Morse knew. They didn’t like the direction Nick in which was going.

Less Baudelaire and more Bo Diddley, Ken had told him.

Morse was not overly fond of Ken Wilding, but he knew he meant the world to Nick. And the reverse was also true. They were like two sides of the same coin, the two brothers.

To the outside world, they might seem ever at odds with one another: Ken, always practical, the natural leader; Nick, more introspective, dreamier, the proverbial artist. But together, they truly were the head and the heart of the band. When they were out of harmony with one another, they each felt it keenly. And while bitter fights might arise between them, neither would allow so much as a word to be spoken against the other by an outsider.

Morse didn’t know the slightest thing about their so-called music.

But loyalty.

That was something he could understand.

“What’s it called? Your song?” Morse asked.

Nick grinned mischievously. “You’ll see,” he said.

He twisted round in his nest of pillows and fixed the reel of tape onto a tape player behind him.

Morse watched him warily.

“We aren’t . . . You don’t want to listen to it _now_ , do you?” Morse asked.

His head ached, he was tired, despite having just slept, and an empty clawing feeling churned with him, that, after a moment, he realized was hunger. He thought longingly of those cakes left back at his house.

All of those ornate structures of sweetness, just sitting there, and he was fairly certain that Kay and Bixby had had not one taste.

Nick was still grinning.

“No,” he said. “No. I don’t want you to hear it. Not quite yet. You can later, though.”

Morse exhaled sharply, flooded with relief.

The truth of it was, Morse was grateful.

The truth of it was, he didn’t want to hear it at all.

Awful racket it was, all of it.

“Here,” Nick said. “I want to celebrate. This night is golden. I can _feel_ it.” He drained his glass and poured another for himself and then filled a second one for Morse.

His fingers brushed the back of Morse’s knuckles as he handed him the wine, and they were warm, so warm against his frozen hands.

And why was he so cold on a summer night? Perhaps he _was_ still under the water, slowly going numb with the cold . . . or perhaps . . .

Or perhaps he simply needed a drink. He tipped his head back and took a long sip.

Then he lowered his glass, furrowing his brow, aware suddenly that Nick’s eyes were burning brighter, that he was watching him expectantly.

“One should always be drunk," Nick said. "So as to escape from that horrible burden of time that bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. On wine, on poetry, on virtue, as you wish. But be drunk. That’s the only way to get at the truth of things. To step into that other world."

Morse snorted at the bastardized lines of Baudelaire, but Nick quirked a smile.

“You’ll see it, someday,” he murmured. “And then you’ll believe me. Once you've come with me, you'll understand.”

And then Morse stilled under the fervor of his words, gave a nervous, disbelieving huff of a laugh, as if to bring the man back down to earth.

He realized, then, that Nick was no longer watching him expectantly, but almost eagerly, as if he was waiting for...

Nick’s face drew closer and then closer still, until Morse was looking directly into his gas-fire blue eyes, which crackled, as always, with that same odd intensity, with something like static.

He raised one hand and placed it at the back of Morse’s skull, running his fingers through the disheveled curls at the back of his nape in a way that made something in Morse’s shoulders unwind, that made him to feel as if he was going limp with the brush of Nick’s circling fingers, that sent him melting into the pillows, until he was tipping back and back, like a tree too close to shore sinking down over the lake, until he was lying once more amidst the pool of silk.

Morse lay his head down, and he was glad of it; he felt heavy somehow, and an odd, sinking feeling had settled over his chest. But the sensation soon fell away, replaced by another, that of Nick’s weight settling over him, of his hand sliding around to the trace the edges of his face, cradling his jawline, drawing him into a kiss.

Nick’s mouth was hard against his with a kiss that tasted like wine, and Morse tilted his head, chasing the tantalizing pressure, the reassurance of the warmth, the burn of the ever-present stubble of Nick’s face. 

But perhaps Morse had leaned back too quickly, because suddenly, the sinking feeling was back again, and his head was spinning.

If he listened hard, he could almost hear it, the spin, like a crash of waves in his head, as if he was being drug down and down and down.

He felt a prickle of worry somewhere at the back of his mind, even as Nick pressed down upon him, one hand working at the buttons of his shirt.

Usually lying so with Nick made Morse to feel as if he was being covered in autumn leaves, deliciously smothered in a velvet heaviness. But now, when Nick cast one long leg over him, it was like seaweed, entangling him, holding him down, like he was pinned underwater, like he was drowning.

Morse turned his face away, and shuffled himself against the silk, pushing Nick back, sitting up against the pillows. 

Something was wrong. And as soon as the thought formed in his mind, it was on his lips.

“Something’s wrong,” Morse said. 

Nick pulled away, taking his face in both his hands, considering him.

“It will be fine,” he crooned. “You’ve just got to give yourself over to it, that’s all.”

Morse’s fevered mind was sent spinning at the words.

Give himself over to _what?_

And then, he knew, with deadly certainty. 

“What did you do?” Morse cried.

“It will be fine,” Nick said, tracing the lines of his face with his fingertips, whispering the words like a vow. “You’re just not used to it, is all. I told you. Tonight is golden. I always told you, didn’t I? That one day we’d go off together? Go beyond the door?”

“But I _know_ what’s beyond the door. I don’t _want_ to go beyond the door,” Morse protested. 

"Don't be so uptight. You don’t have to fight it all the time. Let it go, man. Just relax. And just tell me. What do you see?”

But Morse said nothing.

Because the lamp on the low table was buzzing dangerously; it seemed to be shorting out, seemed to be emitting a stronger and stronger glow, washing the windows in a blazing orange light.

“Nick?” Morse asked.

“Mmmmm?” Nick murmured.

And then the light was growing, churning, as if dissolving into flames, and the place was on fire. It was _actually_ on fire.

“Nick?” Morse tried again, louder this time, because didn’t he _notice?_

But Nick didn’t answer. Something was wrong, Morse was right all along, he knew it. Right before his very eyes, Nick’s face was changing, the gas-fire blue eyes blowing to black.

Nick kept looking at him steadily, with those strange eyes, those stranger's eyes, as if in a plea. It was like he couldn't get enough air, as if he was struggling for breath.

“Don’t!” Morse shouted.

But Nick’s eyes were darkening, and why was Nick leaving him here alone? Nick wasn’t taking him through any door, he was going elsewhere, leaving him here in a place on fire. He had come all this way so that he would not be alone, and here he was, and Nick was going, and the walls were collapsing inwards as the flames grew.

They had to get out of there.

Morse rose and grabbed Nick by the arm and tried to pull him, but he was like a dead weight, just like that arm, that terrible disembodied arm.

He pulled and pulled until, finally, he felt the grass cool beneath his feet, the cool and damp of it through his thin socks, and they were almost there, almost away from the implosion of glass and stone that threatened to envelop the building.

He tried once more to scream, to tell Nick to get up, to run.

_“Run! Run! Run!”_

He shouted the word over and over like the pounding of a drum. Or, at least, his mouth was moving to form the words. Whether any sound poured forth, Morse wasn’t sure. He couldn’t hear it, couldn’t hear his own voice; he could hear only a crash and a roar, like the wind of a rising storm. 

He tried to run, but his brain was on fire.

And his body was underwater.

*****

The phone in the den started ringing as soon as Thursday pulled his chair back to sit at the table.

“Better get that,” he told Win. “Might be work.”

He padded across the hall and into the den. With any luck, it was Strange calling with some news of Dr. Lorenz.

He picked up the receiver.

“Thursday residence,” he said.

“Inspector Thursday,” Sergeant Strange said. “We’ve just gotten a report in. There’s been some sort of incident. Over at Lake Silence.”

Lake Silence, Of course Lake Silence.

“Dr. Lorenz?” Thursday asked sharply.

“No,” Strange said. “It’s Maplewick Hall again.”

Thursday sighed. Goddamn it. What bit of theater was playing out over there now? They were in the middle of a double _murder_ investigation. They didn’t have time to be playing nursemaid to a bunch of over-indulged pop stars playing games. There was another enemy out there somewhere, hiding in the woods, unseen.

Did those ponces at Maplewick Hall have to be their own worst enemies, too?

“What is it?” Thursday, asked wearily. “Another drug overdose?”

“No. It’s another missing person,” Sergeant Strange said.

Thursday stilled for a moment.

“I’ll be right there,” he said.

Slowly, he hung up the phone.

There was no reason real reason for it; there were plenty of people who hung about Maplewick Hall, after all.

But somehow, Thursday’s mind was filled at once with the image of a young man, one who once sat just outside his office, shoulders hunched as he pored over a set of papers, clicking away at a pen. 

He wasn’t sure what game he was playing at, Morse. Stumbling about in those woods, putting himself in the path of God-only-knew-what.

But Thursday felt it, a pain in his chest that rattled like a bullet near his heart, a pang of fear.  
  


The fear that—whatever game it was, he was playing—that Morse had somehow lost. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any one is still following this one, I would love to know! I’m going to try to hit the gas with this one now... :D


	8. Seek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thursday and Jakes look into a missing persons report called in from Maplewick Hall

Thursday and Jakes found Ken Wilding on the shore of Lake Silence, pacing about in small circles, running his hands through his mess of dark hair.

As soon as he caught sight of them, a wash of relief flooded his scruffy, unshaven face.

“You’re here,” he said.

Thursday suppressed a snort.

The man had never been any too pleased to see them before. And he was tempted to tell Ken Wilding just that.

But then he found that his heart just wasn’t in it. His heart was still beating, along with the bullet rattling deep in his chest, with the fear of it, with the fear that the latest person to have gone missing in the woods around Lake Silence might be the austere young man who had once sat just outside his office door, his thin shoulders hunched over a folder, distractedly clicking a pen.

As Thursday stood there on the bank, however, taking in Wilding’s harried appearance, he came to realize that it wasn't Morse who had disappeared, but that it must certainly be the man's younger brother, Nick Wilding.

Thursday stole a glance across the dark water—and, sure enough, they were standing directly on the opposite shore from the small island where Nick Wilding’s “enchanted place” lay, glowing with a soft light.

“Nick’s gone,” Ken confirmed a moment later. “It don’t make no sense. I just went over. The light’s on, but he’s not there.”

Thursday narrowed his eyes and shone his torch across the dark and watery way.

And then his heart—so recently surging heavily with adrenaline—stilled.

“There are two boats over there,” Thursday said. 

“Yeah,” Ken Wilding said. “That’s just it. Both boats are there, but no one is around the place. It don’t make sense.”

He jerked his head, then, gesturing to a rowboat that lay stranded on the bank, just a few yards from his feet. “I had to drag this one from out of the boat house to go and take a look. I called all around, but no one answered.”

Jakes angled the beam of his torch on the extra boat as Wilding spoke—revealing the dull shine of an old aluminum craft and a trail of crushed grass behind it, marking the route that Wilding had taken in pulling the boat across the lawns.

“Well,” Thursday said. “Let’s have a shufti, then. See if there’s anything that might give us a lead as to where they might have gone.”

And the plural pronoun came naturally.

Nick didn’t get both boats over there by himself, after all. 

Someone had been with him. 

And if no one else from Maplewick Hall was unaccounted for . . .

. . . might it be Morse?

Thursday started over to begin the work of dragging the boat to the water, when Wilding began to sputter. 

“It’s just. . . .” he began. Then he hesitated, breaking off mid-sentence.

“Yes?” Thursday prompted.

Ken shrugged, looking troubled.

“It’s just . . . Nick. He was riding so high, you see. He wrote a song, and everyone really dug it. And it’s just. . .”

“Just _what_?” Thursday snapped.

“You think he might have been celebrating a little _too_ much,” Jakes said, shrewdly.

“He don’t do nothing heavy,” Wilding hastened to explain. “Just a bit of pot. Mushrooms. It’s just . . .” and, here, he looked uneasy. “I can’t help but think of that bloke a few months back.”

“The overdose,” Thursday supplied.

“Wasn’t an overdose,” Wilding said. “He just got hold of some bad stuff.”

“Mmmmmmm,” Thursday rumbled.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other, in Thursday’s opinion. It was all bad stuff, really. And lately, it seemed, it was all the worse. Chinese heroin and LSD, cut with god-only-knew what.

There was no telling what those sort of chemicals might do to a mind like Morse’s. The lad hopped from one thought to another, had imagination in overdrive, as it was. He hardly needed any help in moving things along, as it were.

Thursday breathed heavily and headed over to where the third boat lay on the nearby shore. He bent to grab the stern, to begin the task of dragging the boat back into the water, but the sudden movement forced the bit of metal that dwelt within him deeper into his chest, and he broke into a fit of coughing that seemed to echo off the trees, like the barks of a pack of wild dogs, harshly into the night.

“You alright, man?” Wilding asked.

And then, to Jakes, “Is he alright?”

Jakes ignored him, but rather bent down to hook a hand under the stern of the boat himself, and, at once, Wilding moved to help. Once the boat was half-floating, half-grounded on shore, Wilding climbed in and took up the oars, waiting for Thursday and Jakes to join him.

Thursday cleared his throat and straightened, and then stepped into the boat, careful of his balance. Jakes followed.

And then, they were setting off for the small island once more, for the second time that day, across the moonlit lake, the gentle sloshing of the oars in the water the only sound for miles away.

****

In the pavilion, all was deserted, just as Ken Wilding had said.

A lamp had been left burning, though, and, what was more, Thursday _did_ have that ineffable sense that someone had recently been there. He looked about, trying to get the feel of the place, as if he might find the answer to his question through some sort of osmosis.

Was it Morse who had inexplicably disappeared, along with Nick Wilding?

On a low table, there was a bottle of wine and two glasses—one empty, one half-full. He reached down and wrapped one broad hand around the bottle. It was lukewarm to the touch; there was no sign that it had been chilled.

“You sure your brother was here?” Jakes asked Ken Widling, circling about, his eyes sharp.

Wilding walked into the nest of crimson cushions where Thursday had seen Nick Wilding lounging that morning, sprawled out like a rajah at his ease. Amidst the throne of silk sat a large wood-paneled and gunmetal gray tape player, an item that seemed largely out of place with the bucolic still-life of a place, replete with bottles of wine and glasses, a blue and white china bowl spilling over with apples and grapes, white tapered candles and embroidered pillows the color of ripe pomegranates.

Wilding knelt to examine the tape.

“This looks like . . . It looks like this might be the demo tape we just recorded this afternoon. Nick _must_ have been here.”

He pressed the button, wonderingly, as if to test his theory, and immediately the eerie silence gave way to a primal drum beat and to a grind of chord progressions churned out by a duo of electric guitars.

And then, Nick Wilding’s voice—a bit huskier, rougher-edged than the voices of the crooners who had been popular back in Thursday’s own day—reverberated out into the night.

_Down by the edge of the water_

_I found a love that could never falter_

_But as I looked into blue eyes so clever_

_I found my love was a hopeless endeavour_

Jakes frowned to himself, softly, as a new strident flurry of chord progressions formed a bridge of sorts, until Nick’s voice started up again.

_I met you walking alone by the lake._

_Mulling over your latest mistake._

_You told me that your world was spinning._

_Hold me tight, because it’s just beginning._

_Oh, my love, my love._

_My own hopeless endeavour_

_Don’t say, my love, my love,_

_Is just one hopeless, endeavour_

Jakes looked at him sharply at the last line. There was something odd in the pause of it, there in those final words. But before Thursday could be sure of it, the song ebbed away into the chorus—softer, lilting, more lyrical.

_’Cause when I look into your eyes, I will soar and I will fly_

_When I look into your eyes, I will, endeavour_

And there it was. Another pause, so that the line might be heard either way.

_I will endeavour._

_I will, Endeavour._

Oh, for Christ’s sake.

Ken moved to cut the song off, but Thursday held up a hand, gesturing for him to let it play. Who knew? It was obvious what it was all about. Perhaps it might offer some clue as to what Nick Wilding had been planning, as to where they might have gone.

Thursday narrowed his eyes and listened.

_Give me your heart, and you’ll have mine_

_Whenever and wherever,_

_To stay by your side, I’ll seek, I’ll strive,_

_I will, endeavour_

_I know that nothing would ever be the same_

_If you would only see, if you'd endeavour_

_If you would try, if you would say you would stay_

_If you'd let me call your name_

There was a final progression of chords, then, as the song grew more insistent, more ragged.

_Meet me at the edge of forever_

_My bitter, sweet endeavour_

_It’s no journey for a love faint-hearted_

_But once we fall, we’ll be never parted._

_And oh, my love, my love._

_My own hopeless…._

“Those ponces!” Jakes spat, with a vehemence that surprised Thursday. “What? Do they think it’s some sort of code word? His name’s been in in all of the papers. Don’t they know that?”

Ken snapped off the tape and looked up, a look of confusion clouding his face.

“Whose name?” Ken asked. “What are you on about, man?”

Thursday sighed heavily, as Jakes angrily lit up a cigarette.

Evidently, the Wildwood didn’t.

As for Morse, Thursday highly doubted he knew anything much about it. He certainly wasn’t the most effusive of people. He didn’t think Morse would be particularly grateful for the honor, if he ever found out about it.

No.

_When_ he found out about it.

But there was something unsettling there, in that last verse, something that struck a nerve.

_Edge of forever?_ What the hell was that supposed to mean? _Once we fall, we’ll be never parted?_

Thursday had seen such language expressed before, usually in notes left with a pair of corpses.

“What was that, then?” Thursday asked sharply. “Go where? What? Is that some sort of suicide pact?”

Ken looked at him, his brow furrowed. “ _What?_ No. Nick wouldn’t do that. He was happy, when he left us. Everyone dug his new song, like I said. He was riding high.”

Thursday scowled and began to shuffle through some of the ridiculous pillows, picking each one up and then tossing it aside. Wedged within the mountain of silk, he found a well-worn paperback book, emblazoned with abstract prints of three surreal eyes, outlined in blue, red, yellow, rust orange, and green. _The Doors of Perception_ by Aldous Huxley.

He’d seen the book before, left in some squatter’s flat. The so-called psychedelic experience.

Was this something the two of them had been planning, then?

The promise of seeing beyond this world, of finding some other place, might be quite tempting to two oddballs who didn’t feel they belonged anywhere.

But Thursday didn’t see it. It didn’t suit on either count.

The Morse he knew was a man who dealt in facts, the colder and harder, the better.

And besides, Morse _did_ have a home, a family, of sorts. Somewhere he belonged.

At his desk at Cowley.

Thursday let the book drop and tossed a few more pillows about. In the mess of it all, he uncovered a pair of men’s dress shoes, scuffed and black, with holes worn through the soles so that he could look straight through the bottom of them. They looked like they could be . . .

And then, he noticed amidst the crimson silk, one thin tie—simple and solid sky-blue—something none of the Wildwood’s lot wore.

“Morse was here,” Thursday said, heavily. 

Jakes snorted, ripping his cigarette from his mouth.

“Of course, he was.”

“Sir,” his sergeant added, then, as softly as an afterthought, as if to mitigate the impatience, the anger, in his words.

Jakes stepped outside, as if he needed air. Thursday watched him through the window as he went, stalking across the lawns, shining his torch on the grass. And then he seemed to draw to a halt.

“Sir?” he called.

Thursday went to join his sergeant at once, and Ken Wilding followed.

There, in the torchlight, was a path of crushed grass, just like the trail Ken Wilding had left behind in dragging the third rowboat from the boathouse.

A trail where something . . . someone? . . . had been drug down toward the shore.

They followed it, as Jakes continued to shine the beam just a few feet ahead of them, lighting their path. 

And then the light fell on something pale, hidden in the grasses along the bank.

Ken broke into a run. 

“Nick!” he called. “ _Nick?”_

Thursday drew up alongside of him. It was, indeed, Nick Wilding lying there, half-hidden in the high, crushed, sweet grass, his shirt completely unbuttoned so as to expose the thin chest, rising and falling shallowly, his crackling blue staring blankly up into the stars.

Ken Wilding dropped to his knees, tapping lightly at Nick's face.

“Nick?” he asked.

At his brother’s touch, Nick’s body spasmed, and a look of pain contorted across his face. It was wrong, all wrong. The man’s eyes were open, but there was no sign that he was conscious of their presence; it looked as if he was staring at some fixed point, up beyond the stratosphere.

“He must have gotten some bad stuff,” Wilding muttered. And then, he patted at his brother’s face again.

“Nick?”

“Nick? Can you hear me, man?”

Thursday looked about, grimly, taking in the scene.

How had the man ended up here? It didn’t look as if he had the wherewithal to have crawled here himself, under his own volition. From the way his body was laid, one arm twisted up over his head at an odd angle, it appeared as if he had been drug along, like so much dead weight.

But why? To what end?

Thursday turned back to the pavilion, lamp-lit and glowing softly in the darkness.

Morse was as staid and as severe a person as Thursday had ever known. If he had gotten a hold of whatever it was that was currently coursing through Nick Wilding’s veins, mightn’t he have panicked? Felt frightened by the sudden and alien loss of control?

Mightn’t he have felt that whatever danger he perceived, was somehow indicative to that place?

He narrowed his eyes, trying to piece together what had happened, and he could almost see it . . . Morse circling about, in the clutter of the pavilion, wild-eyed and confused . . . and in an effort to escape what was in his mind, did he feel the need to escape that _place?_

And to take Nick Wilding, lifeless as he was, along with him?

But if that was the case, where was Morse now? 

Thursday’s eyes fell heavily, then, into the depths of the black water.

If Morse was anywhere near the state of Nick Wilding and had fallen into the lake . . .

Jakes must have gotten there right at the moment he did, for, in a moment, he was shining the torch all about the water's surface, as if searching for a sign of a billowing white shirt, or a glimmer of auburn hair, floating in the darkness.

But the lake, mercifully, was broad and empty and still.

Then, Jakes was stripping off his jacket and tossing it aside.

Ken Wilding gazed at him for a moment, still dumbfounded at finding his younger brother in such a state, but then he seemed to cotton on, and, much to Thursday’s surprise, followed suit.

The two younger men jumped into the lake, and Thursday watched them with weary eyes. The water had been so still. Not a slosh or a whimper of sound, other than a chorus of frogs and crickets, partially broken now, by their obtrusive presence.

Even if they _did_ find him there, it would be too late.

Far, far too late.

But perhaps they had always been too late.

_No_. He thought to himself. _Don’t say that._

He felt certain, that if Morse were dead, that surely, he would know it. Not in any corner of his mind did he truly expect either Jakes or Ken Wilding to pull a lifeless Morse up to the surface, as still as a pale shadow, finally gone to where they could not find him.

Thursday began to walk stridently along the bank, casting his torch from side to side, looking into the water along the shore. Perhaps he was drifting, hanging onto a floating log, or caught up and hidden in the tall grass, just as Nick Wilding was.

He walked the perimeter of the small island, and then, by the time he returned to place where he had started, Jakes and Ken Wilding were both pulling themselves from the thick water, each seeming to have reached the same conclusion.

If Morse _was_ there, he was off, far beyond their reach.

“Let’s get your brother up to the house,” Thursday told Wilding, tersely. “I want to call to get some divers out here.”

Because as impossible as it was to imagine that Morse was dead, it was even more impossible to imagine leaving him here, if he was, if it was true. If Morse was there, resting somewhere at the muddy bottom, or floating somewhere just around the bend, he would be damned if he would leave him here. He would be damned if he didn’t bring him home, one way or the other. 

And if Morse was _not_ there, if he _had_ made it across the lake, then once Thursday found him, he would not let him go so easily.

This time he’d throw him in the back of the Jag and _make_ him come home, even if he had to drag him, cursing up a blue streak, halfway back to Oxford.

****

It was a hell of a thing.

Thursday stood in the large drawing room of Maplewick Hall, a part of a circle who had gathered around Nick Wilding, as the young man lay on the floor shirtless, in those ridiculous purple pajama pants, twitching as if he was coming down with a case of St. Vitus dance.

He managed to tear his eyes away only when Jakes entered the room, freshly changed into a set of spare clothes taken from the boot of the Jag, coming to a halt beside him. 

It seemed incredible to Thursday that he could simply stand there, that he could see the case through to its conclusion, when his thoughts were off in the woods, off in the water, off wherever Morse might be. 

Dr. Bashki, the Wildwood’s private physician, who Thursday already knew in his gut to be the worst sort of quack, good only for keeping the band hopped up on pills—uppers, downers, anything to ensure the show would go on—was crouching beside his patient, clicking on a pen light.

“I’m just going to shine a little light in your eyes. It’s not going to hurt,” he said.

As Thursday took in the sight before him, the thought came, unbidden, that if this was to be Morse’s fate, perhaps it would be better if he was lying peacefully somewhere, resting on the bottom of the lake.

A Morse so locked within his own head would be a terrible thing to behold.

Thursday’s thoughts were coursing, weighing out the possibilities, but they all came down to three empty syllables. 

_Ah, lad._

_Why?_

At the moment that Dr. Bashki shone the light in the Nick Wilding's dazed blue eyes, the young man's body jumped, reflexively.

“What’s the matter with him?” Ken Wilding shouted. “He’s my brother! Do something!”

“Hey! hey!” the man who Thursday knew to be the drummer of the group said, taking Wilding’s face in his hands. “Look at me. He’s high, man. He’s just high. You need to stay cool. He’s OK. He’s just on a trip, and he’s gonna come back down.”

“That’s not mushrooms!” Ken Widling shouted. “He wouldn’t do any chemicals. Which one of you bastards dosed him?”

“The main thing he needs is a calm environment and a quiet, dark room, and someone to stay with him,” Dr. Bashki said.

“I’ll do it,” volunteered one of the girls, at once, a blonde who looked years younger than his Joan.

“You’ve done enough!” Ken roared, and Thursday watched the scene with narrowed eyes.

What was Ken on about? Why would he think someone had “dosed” Nick? Had there been some sort of infighting amongst the group?

“He left and he was fine, and now he’s half out of his mind. So just say away!” Ken shouted.

“I didn’t _do_ anything,” cried the other girl—Emma, she had said her name was, last time they had been round, looking into the disappearance of Ingrid Hjort. 

“The only people who are allowed anywhere near him are me, Chris and Lee. All right?" Ken said. "We’ll do it in shifts.”

“Anything, Ken.” 

“You got it, man.”

Thursday shook his head, sighing heavily.

And then, he sensed Jakes’ lean figure tense at his side, as if his sergeant had been struck by a sudden thought. 

“Morse is from . . . where?” he murmured. “Up north, right? Lincolnshire?”

Thursday frowned— heartened by Jakes’ use of the present tense, but confused by the question.

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Jakes said. “He’s a country lad, then, isn’t he? Underneath all that posh pose? There’s ponds and lakes and things there. He most likely knows how to swim. Not as if he grew up in the East End, is it?”

And Thursday had thought the same.

He might have swam across, made it out into the woods. He _must_ have. 

If the lad was dead, he would _know_ it.

Or was that simply what he wanted to believe?

“Those glasses,” Jakes mused. “If the stuff was in the wine. Well. One glass was empty. But the other wasn't half finished, was it? If that one was Morse’s . . .”

They exchanged glances, and not for the first time, Thursday was grateful for Jakes’ steady presence. He was like the dutiful son in the old story, the son who stayed home, stayed by his old man’s side, through thick and thin. While the other strayed off, God only knew where.

***

In the darkness, their torches lit the trees like ghosts as they walked, step by strident step, through the woods of Lake Silence.

“Morse!” Thursday shouted.

The name echoed amongst the firs, sounding desolate amidst the shadowed branches.

“Oy!” Jakes called. “Morse!”

Thursday quirked a mirthless smile. The sergeant called out the name as if he was annoyed at Morse for keeping him waiting, as if Morse was just on the other side of the office and Jakes wanted him to fetch him a file.

They walked on, through the torch-lit, star-lit wood, the ground a crumble of leaves beneath their feet.

And then Thursday stopped short.

There was a slight scuffle in the distance, a sound of flurry and of movement amidst the trees. A crush and rustle of leaves, sounding off in a steady drum-beat, as if someone was running.

Jakes must have heard it, too—it must not have been mere fancy, an old man’s ears playing tricks on him in the darkness, because his sergeant, too, went still beside him.

Jakes lifted his torch to shine the beam of it through the trees, casting rough bark and dark needles into a spotlight of bright white as the sound continued, drawing nearer and ever nearer.

And then, in a thick crash of branches, a lone figure was flying out from amidst the trees. For the briefest of instants, Jakes’ torch illuminated Morse’s ghost-pale face and big blue eyes, blown and luminous in the sudden circle of light, before Morse stopped dead in his tracks and threw one arm up wildly across his face, as if to protect his eyes from the shock of it, from the harshness of the torch beam.

Jakes lowered the torch at once; he seemed to notice the erratic nature of Morse’s movements—the way he had jerked his arm up, the way in which he hovered midstep—seemed to understand that the sharpness of the light, that sudden contrast, might well be enough to send Morse bolting off in the other direction. 

“Morse!” Thursday boomed, his heart surging with relief, but his voice full of command, as if he might, with the one word, glue Morse’s feet to the spot.

Morse, thank God, remained where he was, standing still although breathing heavily. Slowly, he lowered his arm.

“Sir?” he asked, his voice a faint croak.

“Christ,” Jakes hissed.

As Morse moved his arm, revealing his face and chest, it was apparent: the front of his white shirt, soaked through so as to cling to his skin, was bright red with blood.

Thursday’s breath caught in his chest, thick with the rattle of metal.

How could it be so? Morse had just been running through the woods at full throttle, so much so that his thin frame was heaving with exertion, so that he was panting fit to burst.

How could he have been running so, whilst so gravely injured?

Could it be he was so out of his head that he didn’t even notice?

Thursday closed the gap between them in a handful of steps.

“Sir?” Morse called out wildly, as Thursday approached, as if he wasn’t quite sure who it was he was seeing, as if to make certain that his perception matched reality, but Thursday said nothing. Thursday’s mind was surging into overdrive, his broad and calloused hands running over Morse’s thin face, perfunctorily lifting his sodden collar and half-unbuttoned shirt, looking for signs of injury, for the source of the blood, while all the while Morse stood, his breathing heavy and erratic, shaking with the cold before him.

But Thursday could find nothing.

The lad was, apparently, unharmed.

But if it wasn’t Morse’s blood, then . . .

Thursday looked again into Morse’s face, into the eyes wide and blue with fear. There was some terror in them, some terror beyond the horrors of his hallucinations, beyond those of his own mind.

“Sir?” he asked, yet again.

“Yes, Morse?” Thursday said, encouragingly. He put a hand on his upper arm, in a gesture of reassurance, and Morse began at once almost to lean into it, as if depending on it to hold him up.

Morse swallowed thickly, as if trying if to calm himself, but in the next instant, his thin chest was heaving once more, like a bird’s in a snare, as he struggled for breath.

“It’s a . . . It’s a . . .” he choked.

And then, without warning, his knees seemed to buckle beneath him, so that he sank to the ground, the wet fabric of his shirt slipping right through Thursday’s hand with a slither like wet marsh grass. 

Thursday crouched down beside Morse at once, as the lad blinked and looked about, his eyes eerily vacant, as if he wasn’t quite sure how he had come to be sitting on the ground.

“Morse?” Thursday asked. He returned his hand to his upper arm, as if trying to give him something solid to anchor on to. 

“You’re alright, Morse,” he said, as Morse sat, shaking, struggling for air. 

Morse swallowed again, trying to calm his breathing.

“That’s it, Morse,” Thursday said. "You're alright." 

Morse looked up into Thursday’s face, then, and took hold of the lapels of his coat, twisting them in his hands, drawing him nearer, as if wanting to make sure he had his full attention.

“Sir. You have to . . . You have to . . . We have to help . . .”

“I’m here, Morse. I’m going to help you, alright?” Thursday said.

“But sir! It’s a . . .” he said a word at last, but it was unintelligible, wrenched from him like a sob.

“Take your time,” Thursday said, in the crooning voice he had once used for Sam and Joan when they were children and had woken from a bad dream. “You’re all right, Morse.”

Whether or not Morse heard and understood, Thursday wasn’t sure. The lad simply continued to stare at him, his blue eyes blown wide, his heavy breathing seeming to wrack his slight frame, so that the sound of his sharp gasps seemed to reverberate through the fir trees, magnified by the thick silence of the night.

Thursday frowned.

Was this normal?

Was it just because he had been running so hard?

Or could he actually not breathe properly?

Even Jakes, who had never seemed overly fond of Morse, furrowed his brow, watching the scene with concern. 

“It’s a … It’s a . . .You have to . . .” Morse managed, at last, panting through the words.

And then, suddenly, he was moving again, using the leverage from his grasp on the lapels of Thursday’s coat to pull himself to his feet.

“It’s a . . . It’s … It’s a _tiger_!” he shouted.

His voice cracked wildly on the last word. 

Two seconds of ringing silence followed.

What the hell? What sort of trip was the lad on? What could he have seen to have made him think such thing? Had the conversation they had had on the day they found Ricky Parker’s arm in the drink made that much of an impression on him?

The incongruity of it all, of the disembodied arm floating like a sickly, pale log in the still water had been lurid enough to cause Morse to pass right out at the sight of it, just as he had on that first visit to DeBryn’s morgue years ago.

Had Jakes’ sarcastic words about tigers been bouncing around in his head, occupying some corner of his mind ever since?

But Morse put a hand on Thursday’s arm, looking at him imploringly. However far gone he was, he must have still been sharp enough to have caught the look of doubt on his face straight away.

“It’s is! It’s a _tiger_!” Morse shouted, his voice echoing amidst the trees. “I heard it! I saw it! And then that man.”

“What man?” Thursday asked at once.

“That man. I found him. He grabbed me by my shirt,” Morse said, and now the words were spilling from him wildly. “He was . . . He was . . . And he said . . .”

Morse twisted his lapels once more, as if trying to pull him along.

“Come,” he said. “Come with me.”

And then, with a sudden vigor that Thursday would not have thought possible, Morse tore away, flying off into the trees.

“Morse!” Thursday called.

Jakes cursed softly and gave chase, shining the torchlight in the dark woods as he went, and Thursday followed, quickly growing out of breath with each pounding, heavy step. 

Finally, they caught up to Morse in a small clearing. The lad seemed to be spinning around in small circles, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with himself or where to go.

“Here. I was…. He was …" 

And then Morse’s eyes were round with terror.

“He’s here!” 

Jakes slowed to a halt and aimed the beam of his torch on the ground . . .

. . . and onto the bloodied body of Hector Lorenz.

Jakes swore again, sharply under his breath.

It was a gruesome sight. The man lay there, slashed open as if . . . 

“It’s . . . It was a _tiger,_ ” Morse cried. “It was . . . "

Morse was standing, trembling from head to foot, carefully watching Jakes’ face, as if hopeful he might believe him.

“The man's been bloody ripped clean open,” Jakes said, disbelievingly. He stooped down then, and, wordlessly, picked up a handkerchief half-buried in the leaves. It was much like the one they had found with Ingrid, embroidered with a blue _HL._

And Morse shuddered. The sergeant’s descriptive language must have been too much for him, because his struggling attempts to draw in enough air into his lungs gave way to an odd sort of gurgle deep in his throat, sending him gagging, his body wracked by spasms with it, until he spun around, fell to his knees on the ground, and vomited.

For a moment he and Jakes stood there, in an eerie tableau, trying to make sense of it all.

Then Thursday paced over to where Morse knelt retching, helpless as wave as wave of nausea overtook him. Thursday crouched beside him and rubbed circles on his back through the icy and sodden fabric of his shirt, as Morse heaved, lost and senseless in his misery.

“It’s alright. You’re all right, Morse,” Thursday crooned once more.

There wasn’t much there for the lad to rid himself of, but perhaps it was for the best, that he get whatever it was he _did_ have out of his system.

For a moment, none of the three of them said a word. Thursday sat quietly with Morse, as Morse tried once more to calm himself, to catch his breath, the rasp and gurgle of it the only sound, while Jakes stood off, peering through the trees, his sharp face and heavy brows contorted, deep in thought. 

“Crevecoeur Hall is the closest place from here. Perhaps we can take Morse up there. Use their telephone to call for DeBryn.”

“Good idea, sergeant. “Maybe we can have him take a look at Morse, too.”

“DeBryn?” Jakes asked, incredulously.

“Rather a pathologist who knows his game look at Morse than that quack dealing with Nick Wilding up at Maplewick Hall.”

And suddenly, Morse went still.

“Nick,” he murmured.

And then, more sharply, “Where’s Nick?”

Thursday and Jakes said nothing.

“The fire,” he whispered, more to himself than to them, as if he was remembering something. “The . . . the fire . . .”

Then he struggled once more to his feet, and Thursday found himself tensing, fearing that Morse might fly off once again.

“The fire, the fire, the fire,” he chanted.

“What fire?” Jakes asked.

“There was a fire. I . . . I . . . I thought I . . I thought I got him . . . . But then I was . . . I was . . . .”

Thursday frowned, considering him.

If he had dreamed up a fire, might he have dreamed up a tiger?

“You can hear me?” Morse shouted, suddenly. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Jakes said. “Hard bloody not to, isn’t it?”

“But I’m under the water. Did… There was a fire. I have to go . . .”

“You don’t have to _go_ anywhere,” Jakes snapped.

“But Nick . . ."

“Nick is fine,” Thursday said. “You got him out, remember?”

It was a bit of conjecture, assuming it was Morse who had pulled Nick Wilding through the grass and left him on the shore. But who else could it have been? And if Morse was convinced that the garden pavilion had been on fire, it might make sense that he would have done such a thing . . .

“Yes,” Morse said, seemingly soothed by the idea. “And . . . Yes. Alright.”

Thursday glanced up to see that Jakes was looking at him, his deep-set eyes mutinous, no doubt because of the white lie.

Because for all intents and purposes, Nick Wilding was anything but alright.

It wasn’t as if Thursday was in the habit of playing a game of half-truths, but a soothed Morse was a docile Morse, and Thursday wasn’t sure they could manage him any other way.

It would be difficult enough to get the lad up to Crevecoeur Hall as it was. And Thursday was becoming increasingly convinced by the erraticness of his breathing that he needed a doctor.

“But . . .” Morse said again, his eyes wavering, as if his thoughts were going in circles. “But the fire. There was . . . and Nick.”

Jakes snorted. “I wouldn’t worry about Nick Wilding now. You’re friend’s a vegetable.”

Morse stared at him for a moment in disbelief. It was difficult to tell if Morse understood the import of what Jakes meant, or if he merely picked up something in the tone, but his face fell into lines of horror.

“What?” Morse cried. _“What?”_

“Jakes!” Thursday snapped. “That was uncalled for.”

“What? Why should he be so worried about that bloke?" Jakes asked. Then he turned to Morse. "He wasn’t too worried about you, was he? Look at the state of you!" 

The harsh words must have overstretched Morse's overwrought mind, because suddenly, his eyes widened, and he turned, spinning on the spot, as if to rip off again in the trees.

Jakes, however, seemed to sense it coming, and caught him by the arm, throwing him down onto the leaves as if he was a blade of grass.

Morse lay stunned for a moment, before his face fell once more into lines of panic. He hastened to leap back up, but Jakes was faster, grabbing at his arm once more and holding him, before he could get up and do a runner. 

Morse twisted and writhed under his grip, trying to free himself. And then, he was screaming, shaking with an echoing, hoarse cry pitched slightly higher than his usual low and lolling voice.

At the sound of it, Jakes flinched, jumped back, as if he had received an electric shock.

Morse bolted up at once and tore off into the trees, the sound of his retreating footsteps the only sound in the darkness.

“Morse!” Thursday shouted. And then he rounded on Jakes. “Why did you let him go?” he snapped. 

But Jakes, once more, was looking mutinous. There was something unreadable there, hidden under the dark and heavy brows, a trace of a shadow in the deep-set eyes.

“He can't go far,” Jakes said, dully. "He'll wear himself out. Be easier to deal with, most likely." 

Thursday scowled. 

Something had happened there, in that charged moment.

Something that Thursday was convinced had nothing do with his former bagman and everything to do with his sergeant.

Thursday turned on his heel, with a sudden sound of a crush of leaves, and stalked off in the direction in which Morse had taken off.

It was a few moments before he heard Jakes, coming along to join him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: A falling out of old friends at a dinner party at Crevecoeur Hall and Jakes stages his own attempt at an intervention.... 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading :D


	9. Prey

As luck would have it, Jakes was right.

Morse hadn’t managed to get too far, thank Christ.

Although what had possessed Jakes to let Morse loose in the first place, Thursday couldn’t say. It was careless—mad, really—letting the man go, leaving him alone on his own devices, in such a state.

What with whatever had done for Dr. Lorenz still at large, above all?

Thursday sighed, and slowly—mindful of the roots that lay just under the leaves, twisting like the veins of the forest beneath his feet—he made his way down the bank, down to where Morse was sitting quietly at the edge of the black water, his arms wrapped around his knees, rocking gently as he gazed into the lake. 

It was wrong, all wrong, seeing Morse so utterly lost. An addled Morse was like a triangle with four sides. Like a clock that numbered to thirteen. It just didn’t suit.

“Morse?” Thursday queried, careful to keep his voice a low and quiet rumble, soft as a thick blanket, pitched so as not to alarm.

But Morse remained just as he was, looking out over the water.

“It was a tiger. It was tiger,” he muttered, chanting the words, almost like a mantra, under his breath. 

“That’s right, Morse,” Thursday said.

Morse raised his head, then, and looked up at him, his big eyes blue and luminous in darkness.

“It was a tiger,” he said. 

“That’s right, lad. Can you stand up?”

Morse made no answer, only gazed at him with his overlarge eyes, eyes laid wide, eyes that were like two doors thrown open to the storm. It was odd, seeing them thus. There was usually something veiled, something guarded in Morse’s austere face, but now his eyes were eerily transparent, the whirling wheels of his fevered mind visible in their crystalline depths.

“Can you stand up? Morse?”

But still, Morse remained on the ground, watching him blankly.

It was as if Thursday had been speaking another language.

Eh, buggar it.

Thursday crouched down beside him, keeping his movements calm and measured. He wondered if he might be able to work Morse’s arm around his shoulder, get the lad up off the damp ground, figure out a way to get him up to the house.

But Jakes, seeing his intent, beat him to the punch.

“I’ll get him, sir,” Jakes said.

“Mmmm,” Thursday hummed, deciding to overlook Jakes’ implication that his governor was either too old or too decrepit to go about half-hauling Morse through the woods.

Jakes sank down beside them, then, taking Morse’s bony wrist in his hand and stringing his arm up over his shoulders. Then he rose, bringing them both up together to stand.

Morse simply stood there for a moment, as boneless as a rag doll, blinking, as if surprised to be seeing the shadowed world from a different, higher angle. 

“I’ll need you to move your feet, alright Morse?” Jakes said. “At least shuffle them along.”

Morse cast a look back over his shoulder, over the dark and silent lake.

“There’s . . . there’s a tiger.”

“Well. We should be going then, in that case. Right?” Jakes asked, a little wryly. “If there’s a man-eater on the loose?”

“Man-eater,” Morse repeated, wonderingly.

Jakes snorted and began walking, propelling Morse onward, so that he was forced either to move his feet or to fall.

It was slow going, and soon they were in the densest part of the woods, the starlight filtering in shards through layers of evergreen, the branches of the trees turned to mere shapes of shadow in the darkness. It was difficult to see more than a hundred feet ahead.

It was difficult to see how they might ever hope to get Morse out of there.

All the while, as they moved forward, yard by painful yard—over the crunch of sweet-smelling leaves and over roots and uneven ground—a corner of Thursday’s mind was elsewhere, trying to make sense of the events of the past few days.

Could Morse really have seen a _tiger?_

It didn’t make sense that an animal of that size could be out and about, prowling around the woods of Oxfordshire, unseen.

Unless, of course, it _had_ been seen.

By Ricky Parker.

By Ingrid Hjort.

By Hector Lorenz.

It could be that Morse had simply been the first who had seen it and had lived to tell the tale.

Or who knew what was going on behind those overlarge, blown-out, blue eyes? Morse seemed equally as convinced that there had been a fire at Nick Wilding’s enchanted place, but Thursday had seen for himself that that wasn’t so.

Thursday increased his pace, then, blazing a trail through the dark, through stands of firs so thick and old that you just knew somehow, deep in your bones, that if the ancient trees could talk, their low voices would scarcely register above a whisper. A whisper and a murmur of needles, dense enough to absorb all other sound.

Jakes and Morse hobbled along behind him, making their way along in a mad parody of a three-legged race. Morse had gone strangely silent, and Thursday was just thinking that it was possible that they might get him up to the house without further incident, when, suddenly, Morse cried out, emitting a shout of pain and surprise that echoed in the night, so that it seemed as if the woods were full of a hundred Morses, calling amidst the trees.

_“What?”_ Jakes asked. 

“I stepped on something,” Morse said, thickly. 

He looked down at his feet.

“Where are my shoes?”

“Good question,” Jakes said.

“There was a fire,” Morse said then, as if the memory of his shoes had brought back to mind the memory of the place where he had left them. “The windows were bright with it. They were _orange_ with it. Blazing with flame.”

“There wasn’t any fire, Morse,” Jakes said.

“Tiger, tiger, burning bright, burning bright,” Morse mumbled, half under his breath.

Jakes looked to Thursday, arching one heavy dark brow, and Thursday read his meaning all too clear.

The tiger, the fire.

Morse seemed to have gotten the two things tangled up in his mind somehow.

Perhaps, both, then, were mere delusions.

“There . . . there was a fire!” Morse shouted then, and, once more, he began to twist madly in Jakes’ grasp, like a blade of grass turning on the wind. Thursday moved at once to take Morse's arm firmly in his, lest Jakes suddenly let him go again.

"Morse,” Thursday said, grasping his other arm as well, holding him steady, trying to make eye contact with the lad, careful to keep his voice low and firm.

“Morse! Look at me. Look at me. There’s no fire. You don’t have to worry about the fire. Alright?”

“Mmmmmmm. Yes,” Morse breathed.

“We just have to get up to the house. We have to ring Dr. DeBryn, yeah? For the case.”

“The case,” Morse said, seizing upon the word as if it were a lifeline to some former world.

Which, perhaps, it was. 

“That’s right. So you’re going to help us, right? With the case?”

“Mmmmmmm,” Morse said. 

Only when he was certain that Morse had calmed again did Thursday release him, and Jakes half-rolled his eyes as he leaned Morse back up against him, stringing his lanky arm over his shoulders once more. Then he continued on, working to maneuver Morse over uneven ground, dragging him along like a sack of sand.

At last, the trees thinned, and the stone fortress of Crevecoeur Hall came into view, solid and square and well-lit against the starlit sky.

And Morse drew to a halt. “I don’t want to go there,” he said.

Thursday startled at this new outburst and moved to take his arm once more.

“Morse?” he said. “We need to ring DeBryn, remember?”

“Mmmmm,” Morse agreed.

Then, he looked up at the house, uncertainly.

“Oh, god,” he groaned.

Jakes shot Thursday a pointed look, then, one which, again, he understood all too well.

Was this just more nonsense Morse was spouting, some balderdash they could put down to the drugs?

Or did Morse have some _real_ objection to Crevecoeur Hall?

It wasn’t clear at all in the pitch and whisper of the woods.

Had Morse seen a tiger? Or had it all been a mere vision of orange, a burning synapse firing off, emblazoning a flash of flame on the retinas of his burnt, blown eyes, just like the imaginary fire?

Nothing was clear in the darkness.

It was the perfect, awful, metaphor.

****

Entering into the polished and untouchable world of Crevecoeur Hall—gleaming with wood shining like water and scented with bunches of lilac held in clear glass vases—whilst dragging Morse along, sopping and bloodied and disheveled between them, made for a scene that bordered on the surreal.

It made for a contrast all the more bizarre when the butler led them into a formal dining room, where the Mortmaignes, it seemed, were throwing a dinner party of all things.

The guests, seated about a table glittering with silver and crystal, all turned to look up at them as they came in, with faces filled with a bored curiosity that immediately morphed into bewilderment and then to horror at the sight of Morse. It was as if he was a jagged piece of bloodied glass, tossed down onto a banquet table set with a sparkle of perfect champagne flutes.

After a moment’s ringing silence, Guy and Georgina Mortmaigne and their three well-turned-out guests rose to their feet amidst a scuffling of chairs and a tinkling and trembling of china and of dropped silverware. 

“Pagan?” blurted one young man, who Thursday recognized at once from calls out to Bixby’s parties to be Anthony Donn.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Thursday made a quick assessment of the guests standing around the table. Donn and the Belboroughs. They—along with the Mortmaignes—made up the central core of Lake Silence’s posh set. After a quick appraisal of their elegant faces, Thursday found that suddenly, Morse’s reluctance to enter Crevecoeur Hall made sense. Hadn’t Morse said he was friends with Donn “from when they were up?” They were all of an age, weren’t they? Doubtless they had all been at Oxford together.

So. The very friends who had already bore witness to Morse's being sent down, then, were about to bear witness to his fall to an even lower point of descent. No wonder the lad had balked. The old pride was still there, somewhere, then. 

“Tony,” Morse began. He swallowed, as if trying to comport himself with what dignity he could. “It was a tiger.”

It was subtle, but there. Almost lost amidst the stunned expressions of their guests, the Mortmaignes, brother and sister both, seemed to freeze into place.

Lady Belborough and Tony Donn exchanged concerned glances and at once moved around their high-backed chairs, drawing closer to Morse.

“Pagan?” Lady Belborough asked, her blue eyes trained on the red stains on Morse’s shirt. “What’s happened?”  


Then, as if following her gaze, Morse looked down at his white shirt, covered red with blood.

And his knees began to buckle under him at the sight.

Jakes hoisted him back up to his feet, and Morse took a steading breath, exhaling sharply through his nose. 

“It was a tiger,” he choked.

“A _tiger?_ ” cried Georgina Mortmaigne. 

“Inspector Thursday?” Guy Mortmaigne said. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“I’m afraid there’s been another incident in the woods,” Thursday said. “Hector Lorenz is dead.”

Georgina Mortmaigne shook her head of auburn hair upon hearing his words, as if to deny them, the color draining from her face in a way that left her to look almost ghostlike.

“But he _can’t_ be,” she said. “I was only talking to him a few hours ago. What's happened? An accident?”

“We’re keeping an open mind, Miss, but it may have been an animal that attacked him. A big cat.”

At once, tears welled up in her amber eyes, and she turned to her brother, who enfolded her in his arms.

“They’re mistaken, George, of course,” Guy Mortmaigne said.

Thursday narrowed his eyes, frowning darkly.

It was a shock, of course.

But this?

Why, the girl was trembling from head to foot.

“No, it was. I saw it.” Morse said, his voice thick and breathless. “It was a tiger! It was a _tiger!”_

“My god,” Lord Belborough drawled, considering Morse doubtfully. “Are you . . . What’s the matter with you? Are you taking _drugs_ now?”

“It was. It was a tiger,” Morse said.

“All right, Morse,” Thursday said. It was as if the lad was obsessed by the idea.

Georgina Mortmaigne tore herself away from her brother, then, her face fierce, suddenly, half-wild rather than sorrowful.

“He is. He _is!_ Stop it, Pagan! Just stop it! There was no tiger!”

Thursday’s body tensed, as he prepared to take whatever action necessary to deescalate the rapidly rising tension in the room. Anyone else might have seen that the girl was utterly distraught, might have softened his stance in order to mollify her, but Morse, Thursday knew, even in his dazed state, was never one to let a thing go.

And Thursday, it transpired, was not wrong.

“Yes!” Morse insisted. “Yes, there was!” 

“Stop it!” Georgina Mortmaigne shrieked.

It happened so fast that there was no way anyone could have seen it coming. Miss Mortmaigne charged at Morse, half-flailingly, and then slapped him hard across the face.

“Hey,” Jakes protested, taking Morse by the shoulders and turning him out of the way of the line of fire, as Lady Belborough strode forward.

_“George!”_ she cried.

But Miss Mortmaigne had once again turned away, blinded by her tears, falling into the first arms that found her, those of Lord Belborough, and she shuddered, sobbing against his chest.

For a moment they stood in place, as if in a mad sort of tableau, Miss Mortmaigne's sobs the only sound in the deadened room. And then Guy Mortmainge murmured quietly, "“He’s on something, George. I’m sure it can’t be a . . .”

“He can’t say that!” she said, the words wrenched from her as she stood shaking, as Lord Belborough held her in his arms. “Someone needs to stop him! He can’t be dead. He _can't!”_

Jakes and Thursday exchanged glances; the young woman’s emotions seemed to be all over the map—anger at Morse over his talk of tigers, sorrow for the death of Hector Lorenz.

“He didn’t mean anything by it. He doesn’t know, George,” Lord Belborough said. “He’d been sent down by then, remember?”

And Jakes glanced at Thursday yet again.

Didn’t know _what?_

Even Morse, stunned as he was by the turn of events, seemed to stiffen between them, as if he knew that Belborough was referring to him.

Miss Mortmainge seemed unpacified, however; she swallowed her tears and pushed herself away, waxing to anger once more.

“You think you’re the only one who’s ever suffered?” she shouted, as Morse, dumbfounded, stared on. “If you had any self-respect you’d stop squatting on Tony’s property and _do_ something with your goddamned life!” 

“Georgina,” Donn said, his affable face troubled, his tone pacifying.

“No. No,” Miss Mortmaigne said. “He can’t say that! He’s been tormenting all of us. _'What to do about Pagan? What to do?'_ It needs to _stop!_ ”

She turned to Belborough, then, and once more gave way to tears, burying her face in his dinner jacket.

Guy Mortmainge steepled his hands and held them up to his face, as if deliberating something, as Lord Belborough steered Miss Mortmaigne away, towards the French doors that led out onto the terrace. Anthony Donn and Lady Belborough approached Morse in one fell swoop, each taking him by an elbow and leading him off toward the stairs, so quickly that neither he nor Jakes had much say in the matter.

“Guy? May we? We’ll get Pagan sorted,” Lady Belborough said.

Guy Mortmaigne lowered his pressed palms from his pressed lips to answer them. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course. There are some spare things in the blue room. Help yourself to whatever he needs.”

The two of them sequestered Morse off then, as if equally as keen to get him out of the room as Lord Belborugh had been to take Miss Mortmaigne out to the terrace. 

“Where the hell are your shoes?” Donn asked, as they began to make their way up the staircase, and Jakes snorted and shook his head.

And then the room was silent. Just the three of them and an abandoned dinner table, still set in splendor. The mood of the room utterly changed in the space of ten minutes.

Guy Mortmaigne sighed heavily. “My apologies, Inspector. Sergeant. I’m afraid that Pagan’s rather unfortunate outburst. . . . I didn’t like to get into it in front of George, but . . . there’s a reason we got rid of the big cats. She was mauled, quite badly, when she was younger, by Brutus, one of the Bengals. A juvenile. It was six years ago now.”

Thursday looked at him sharply. The man had never mentioned that there had been any incidents of violence regarding the cubs that his father had kept.

“What about escapes? These cubs?” he asked. “There’s been reports of a wild animal taking livestock for quite some years now.”

“The Beast of Binsley,” Guy Mortmaigne replied. “That’s just folklore. Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with anyone here.”

Thursday regarded the man grimly. He was certain the case was just the opposite. Whatever the hell was going on, Crevecoeur Hall was at the very heart of it. 

“Four legs or two, it was something more than folklore that did for Dr. Lornez. I’ll need to speak to Miss Mortmaigne. And to your land agent. Mr. Craven, was it? And I’ll need to use your telephone, to ring the pathologist.”

_“Must_ you trouble George?” Guy Mortmainge asked. “She’s had rather a lot to cope with. I’d sooner you didn’t trouble her.”

“It’s what we do, I’m afraid,” Thursday said, in a voice that brooked no argument.

***

As soon as Thursday was finished putting the call in to Dr. DeBryn, Mortmaigne arrived back in the study with Craven. The earl's son hovered for a moment in the doorway, until Thursday made it clear with one well-timed glower that he and his sergeant would need to speak to Craven alone. And then the man moved away, like a passing shadow. 

Craven, Thursday found, was a little more inclined to talk. He wasn’t a stupid man, Craven. He must have seen at once, from the look in Thursday’s eye, that he was far past his patience with the whole lot of them.

Secrets and lies and wild things tamed and tamed things left to go wild—for all of its outward beauty, there was something of an air of corruption about the place. In all the things that mattered, the Mortmaignes seemed to have everything arse backwards, and that was the truth of it. 

Craven rubbed his graying beard thoughtfully under Thursday’s hardened gaze as he told his tale. “The way I heard it, the earl took them both up into the woods. He shot the tiger, then told the handler, Goggins, he’d get the same if he ever showed his face again.”

“This Goggins. Can you get an address for him?”

“It was six years ago,” the man began, a hint of protest in his voice.

But Thursday narrowed his eyes.

“I’ll see what I can find,” Craven said.

****

They found Miss Mortmaigne and Lord Belborough in the family chapel, dim and cold and smelling faintly of cleaning wax and candle wax, the stained glass windows, which must have been brilliant on a warm summer's day, muted into mere elaborate shapes of dull red and dusky blue and earth green. 

Miss Mortmaigne was kneeling in a small pew, her head bowed, resting her forehead on her clasped hands. Lord Belborough sat in a pew across from her, turned towards her, his long legs hanging casually out into the aisle. He shook his head ruefully at them as they walked in, a gesture that could mean any number of things.

They stepped further down the aisle, their footsteps echoing against the filagreed walls and the high and vaulted ceiling.

Miss Mortmaigne looked up at the sound. Thursday had expected her face to be blotched and tear-stained. But instead, she was pale and calm, the very picture of comportment. She was almost too composed; she behaved almost as if the scene in the dining room hadn’t happened.

“Have you come to pray?” she asked. 

“Not this evening, Miss,” Thursday said. “Your brother told me about the tiger.”

She said nothing, only unclasped her hands, and rose to stand, smoothing her skirt as she did so. 

“You must have been frightened,” Thursday prompted. 

“You’d think,” she said. “Truth is, I don’t remember much about it, just being knocked down and feeling wet. Blood, I suppose. It only hurt later. But he didn’t mean it. He was only playing.”

“ _Playing?”_ Jakes asked, incredulously.

“Of course. If Brutus wanted to kill me, he would have. Besides. It was my fault,” she said.

“It wasn’t your fault, George,” Bruce said.

“I must have done something,” she said, cutting across him. She raised her head then and shrugged. “If you tease a cat, don’t be surprised if you get scratched.”

There was a pause, as the four of them stood in a quadrille, small in the empty space.

“We saw very little of our parents after that,” she added then, a little wistfully.

“Where _is_ the earl?” Thursday asked.

“Nairobi. He’s happy there. Mummy lives in Rome to be near to the Holy Father. So you see, it was my fault. That Daddy had to shoot him. And he did love Brutus so. It broke his heart, I think.”

Thursday scowled. It was hard to understand why the earl had left his family in such a state. Could it be he truly had, in his heart, loved the animal more than his own daughter?

There was something wrong, something terribly broken about the place. The place was as whole and as glossy and as crisp as a green apple, but inside, there was the rot. Perhaps Morse had been in his right mind after all, when he had balked so at stepping foot onto Crevecoeur Hall's immaculate green lawns.

Morse’s instincts always had been spot on, at the end of the day.

****

Thursday and Jakes filed back into the drawing room, then, to find Guy Mortmaigne and Anthony Donn gathered around a plush, forest green sofa, where Lady Belborough sat with Morse—now in a fresh white shirt, his hair damp and curling, and his expression every bit as dazed as that of those damned glassy-eyed animal head trophies that adorned the walls.

There was a chime at the door, and Guy Mortmaigne excused himself, falling in behind the butler who had stood watching with curiosity in the doorway, to go and let the newcomers in.

“Morse?” Thursday asked. “How are you, lad?”

Morse made no reply, but still, he seemed slightly more stable, as if he was beginning to wonder how it was he had come to be in such a place.

Thursday winced to see it all so clear on his face. Morse would hate it, would hate all of it, he knew, hate the very thought that he had been laid so naked and vulnerable before them all. Morse didn’t think much of himself in some ways, in the ways that truly mattered, but he did pride himself on his disciplined mind, on the sharpness of that big brain of his.

Vaguely, Thursday wondered if Morse would ever forgive him for having seen him in such as state. Jakes was looking troubled, too, and Thursday couldn't help but wonder if he was thinking the same thing. There was something there, something between them, Jakes and Morse, some tension, some sharp sliver of a thing unresolved, like the shudder of a vase wobbling dangerously on a shelf, one the might tip either way. 

“Ah. Thursday,” came the sound of a familiar, reedy voice.

Thursday glanced over his shoulder, to see that Mr. Bright himself had come out to the house, a fact that perhaps should not be so surprising. Three murders in the course of little more than a week? It was more than past time for drastic measures.

And, true to course, Mr. Bright’s thin mouth was set into a firm line, his expression stony, his eyes behind the heavy-framed glasses solemn and grim.

And then, just a pace behind him, was Dr. DeBryn, looking quite the opposite.

Thursday had never thought he’d see it—never thought he'd see the day when Dr. DeBryn—ever the picture of calm and comportment, right down to the perfect knot of his bowtie—wore such an expression on his round and impassive face.

It was there for just a moment, that startle of shock, and Thursday frowned, following his gaze. Thursday had told DeBryn that it was Morse who had found the body when he had telephoned him, after all.

But it was not the shock of seeing Morse, perhaps.

But rather the shock of seeing Morse looking so . . . un-Morse like. His austere face softened in confusion, the judicious eyes wide and blown.

“Morse,” Dr. DeBryn said, recovering himself and nodding crisply, just as if he were acknowledging him upon entering a crime scene, one in which Morse stalked about in his gray car coat, flipping through books and opening drawers.

Morse’s eyes trailed up to him, eyes as blue and as blank as a cloudless summer sky.

“Morse. Good heavens,” Mr. Bright said.

Mr. Bright, on the other hand, Thursday felt certain, had _not_ been informed. But still, was Morse so unrecognizable that the man was just now placing him? Morse had sat at a desk in an office just outside his door for two years, after all. 

DeBryn approached Morse slowly, clasping his medical bag before him, and then crouched in front of him, perching on a wide ottoman.

“Morse?” he queried again.

Morse blinked.

“Max?” he asked.

DeBryn’s eyes swerved to Thursday, then, as if to pose the question.

“We think. . . .” Thursday began.

And how else to say it?

“We think he’s been overdosed. LSD.” 

DeBryn raised his eyebrows. It certainly didn’t seem in keeping with the Morse he knew.

“The friend he was with,” Thursday continued. “He’s . . . he’s not well.”

Morse scowled softly at that, as if trying to decipher his meaning, as if trying to follow some tangled string of memory, but then DeBryn was reaching out to take a hold of his jaw, breaking his line of thought and causing him to flinch away.

“Morse,” DeBryn said firmly. “I’m simply going to look into your eyes with a penlight. This won’t hurt at all.”

“Jesus,” Jakes muttered, quietly under his breath, and Thursday knew at once what he was thinking.

It was a terrible pantomime of a scene they had just seen played out, not hours before, between Dr. Bakshi and Nick Wilding.

Morse, unlike Wilding, turned his face, whether consciously to comply or simply because the fancy struck him, Thursday wasn’t sure.

But, whatever the reason, DeBryn took what cooperation he could get. He firmed up his hold on Morse’s chin, holding his head steady as he shone the light searchingly into his eyes.

“Hold still now,” DeBryn said. “There we . . .”

And Morse jerked his head, violently away.

“. . . are,” DeBryn concluded.

Thursday looked to DeBryn, then, questioningly. Morse obviously hadn’t processed the doctor’s words, obviously had not managed to have followed the most basic of instructions, but surely the fact that he had reacted, that he was up and talking, that he was not lying on the floor staring at the ceiling, twitching in pain, the way Wilding had done, was a positive sign?

“Morse,” DeBryn said again. “I need you to hold still now. I’m just going to take your pulse, all right?” He looked into his eyes, holding his gaze commandingly. “All right?”

“All right,” Morse said.

DeBryn raised his hand and placed his fingers against Morse’s throat. Morse swallowed heavily, enough for Thursday to see the bob of his Adam’s apple, and then he looked wildly around the room, as if surprised to find himself the center of attention.

“His pulse is erratic,” DeBryn said. And Thursday wondered how telling it was that DeBryn should be telling him, rather than Morse himself.

“Why?” Jakes asked, his brow furrowed. “What's it do, this stuff?”

“There have been cases of overstimulation to the nervous system. But it’s not toxic chemically, usually, so much as behaviorally,” DeBryn said. “Loss of inhibition, compromised rationality. Most deaths involving the substance are accidental—walking into traffic, onto railway lines . . . ”

_Walking into lakes,_ Thursday supplied in his head. 

“He shouldn’t be on his own for at least twenty-four hours,” DeBryn concluded. 

Thursday nodded. That, he was sure, wouldn’t be a problem. Hadn’t he told himself again and again, as he and Jakes had searched the woods, just what he would do if they found Morse?

Throw him right in the backseat of the goddamned Jag and take him home to theirs?

“Anything else?” Thursday asked. “Will he be all right?” 

“I should think so,” DeBryn said. Then he turned back to Morse, regarding him sternly. “Although I wouldn’t recommend he do such a thing again.”

Morse, it seemed, however, was unable to heed his words, was still lost in thought. 

“Max?” he said. “It was a tiger.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Anthony Donn blurted. “Not this again.”

“What’s that, Morse?” Mr. Bright asked, sharply, stepping forward into the circle of light cast by a glass floor lamp.

“It was a tiger. When I found Lorenz. He. . .” and Morse absentmindedly lifted his hand to run it along the collar of his crisp Oxford shirt, one that fitted him rather too loosely through the shoulders, as if in memory of another hand that had touched him there.

“He . . .” and here, Morse’s eyes filled with shimmer, so that Jakes looked away.

“He took hold of my shirt. And he said. . . He said, ‘Man-eater.’”

Thursday frowned. That was the word that Jakes had used. Had Lorenz actually said such a thing? Or was Morse’s fevered imagination latching on to this and that, molding it all together?

“All right, Morse,” Mr. Bright said. “Don't distress yourself.”

He regarded Morse thoughtfully for a moment, and then turned to Thursday. “I made a request for assistance from the territorials to contain the area,” he said. “No-one in or out until we know what we’re dealing with. Man or beast, too many people have died already.”

“Sir,” Thursday said.

DeBryn rose, then, from the ottoman.

“Now, Inspector,” he said. “I suppose it’s time you to showed me to my . . . _other_ patient.”

“Doctor,” Thursday said.

It was a welcome relief, stepping out of the doors of Crevecoeur Hall, out into the cool night air. The place was like a hothouse, the atmosphere unpleasantly close and heavy, the inhabitants of the place like plants grown twisted and thin, struggling amongst themselves for dominance, for light.

Morse must have felt it too, even in his state. He took a deep breath as they came to the bottom of the high stone steps, as if to clean his lungs, as if to clear his mind with the cold, with the scent of evergreen.

DeBryn kept pace with them, walking alongside them, ready to be led to what remained of Hector Lorenz.

It was then that Thursday realized the slight logistical problem that lay ahead of them.

What to do with Morse?

“Jakes,” Thursday said. “Could you lead the doctor? One of us had better stay here, with Morse.”

“Sir,” Jakes said.

Thursday turned, wondering if Morse had come back to himself enough to object to be referred to in the third person. But as it happened, there was no fear of that. Morse was staring off into the distance, watching a long strand of red wool that hung dangling from a nearby tree as it stirred in the night breeze, like a broken thread of an errant spider, one who had lost its prey. 

“Red, red, red, melted days run in the fiery forgotten sun, ensanguining the skies, how heavily it dies into the west away. . . .”

“Come on, Morse,” Thursday said, heavily, steering the lad toward the car. He could rest up there, in the back seat, while they waited for Jakes’ return.

With any luck, he’d be far less loopy by the time he brought him home to Win and the kids. Otherwise, that would serve not only to alarm Win, but to embarrass Morse all the more.

Thursday had just put a hand on Morse’s arm to guide him toward the black Jag, when Morse ground to a halt, digging his feet in, making himself suddenly immovable.

“No. No. No, no, no, no, no, no,” he said.

Thursday looked into his face; his blue eyes were once more wide with terror.

“Are you all right? Morse?”

Morse looked at him then, the plea clear in his eyes. “No,” he said. “There must be some mistake.”

And Thursday felt the blood run cold in his veins.

Vaguely, he remembered being wheeled out on a gurney, the sky a confusion of lights above—the piercing silver of stars, the revolving flash of red, the raindrop of a white moon—and voices, far off in the distance, both strange and familiar. A curt voice, first, one that he could not place.

_“Endeavour Morse, you are under arrest for the murder of Chief Constable Rupert Standish.... .”_

And Morse’s, low and rolling as the green expanse of Lincolnshire.

_“There must be some mistake. Some sort of mistake.”_

Thursday looked into Morse’s face, and, suddenly, he was knew that Morse was gone again, off into the world of months ago, standing in front of another great house, just as dark and as broken, hearing entirely different words running through his brain. 

_Endeavour Morse, you are under the arrest for . . ._

“Morse, no one is taking you to . . .”

“No! I won’t go. I won’t. I didn’t _do_ anything,” he cried, pulling away and then thrashing in his grip, struggling to break free. “I didn’t _do_ anything.”

“Goddammit Morse,” Thursday bellowed, with a roar that came deep from the bottom of his lungs, a sound that set that errant bit of metal quivering in his chest.

“I won’t go back there!” Morse shouted, with one final lunge, one that threw Thursday off-balance, driving the bullet still deeper, as if it might pierce his very heart, sending him into a painful fit of coughing that seemed to go on beyond time itself. 

When Thursday finally came back to himself, Morse had gone still, clearly solidly back in the present moment, and was watching Thursday in horror. Thursday cleared his throat and coughed once more into his sleeve, sharp and heavy, with a sound that rang through the black night. Suddenly, there was a taste in his mouth like bright copper, and he swallowed against it.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” Morse said.

Thursday inhaled deeply through his nose, his hands resting on the tops of his thighs, bracing himself. How he had come to be so stooped and bent he wasn’t sure.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry. I . . . . Everything . . . .” he heard Morse saying, as if off from some great distance. 

Slowly, Thursday rose, straightening himself. 

“It’s all right, Morse. Not your fault.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Morse flinched, as if he had been stung.

"I made such a hash of things,” he said, his voice just above a whisper, but somehow clearer than it had been before. “I just . . . I just want to go home. I just . . . I just want to forget this ever happened. I just want to go home.”

_“And where’s that?_ ” Thursday wanted to say, wanted to hurl back at him in anger. But that, he knew would be going a step too far. 

It was hard to be angry with the lad now, now that he was looking so contrite. Wasn’t his fault. He very much doubted Morse had the slightest inkling as to what had been in the wine.

And it certainly wasn’t his fault, whatever it was that was doing for the people of Lake Silence, one by one.

“Fine,” Thursday said. “We’ll go back to yours.”

Thursday wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, leaving it stained red with blood.

Jakes and DeBryn and Anthony Donn were standing in a half circle about him, as if in judgment, their self-same assessments as plain as day on their faces. Summer was fading. There was an edge of a chill, sharp as a blade, in the night air. And he was a lunger. Too spent and worn and broken to spend a night in that unheated little shack, let alone to handle an erratic Morse.

“He can come up to the house,” Anthony Donn said. “It’s no use looking like that, Pagan. You know fall is on way. You won’t be able to stay at that lake house much longer.”

“It’s fine,” Morse said. “I like the cold.”

“Pagan,” Donn admonished. 

But Morse shook his head, winding a hand half-madly through his hair.

“Your parents,” he said, miserably. 

And the two words were all that were needed. It was hard to imagine the alarm with which Anthony Donn’s blueblood parents, the very epitome of taste and restraint and decorum, might react to the wreckage that was once Morse. The old pride was still there, then, just as Thursday had hoped. Morse had no wish to be seen by such people in such a state. By anyone.

“I just. I just want to go home,” Morse said. “Please. I just want to be . . .”

“I’ll do it,” Jakes said.

All of them looked to him in surprise. 

“You take Dr. DeBryn out to Lorenz,” Jakes clarified. “I’ll see Morse back, sir. I’ll stay with him.”

Morse widened his eyes in alarm, and Thursday hesitated, remembering how Jakes had let him go in the woods.

Jakes saw the look, the lack of trust in his governor's face, and a flicker of pain rippled over the hard features, the deep-set eyes.

“All right, sergeant,” Thursday said, at last.

Jakes squared his shoulders, the tension in his tight face fading away.

“Morse?” he prompted. "All right? Let’s go?”

Morse stood for a moment, as if, once more, he was two steps behind, as if he could not understand what was happening.

Jakes took Morse's arm then and propelled him forwards. And Thursday, as he watched them go, saw the rightness of it, felt it in his water.

Perhaps it was part of the puzzle of Blenheim Vale. Perhaps they could not go forwards—neither Morse nor Jakes—until whatever the hell it was crackling in the spaces between them was settled, reconciled. 

And Thursday couldn’t be wrong.

Because Morse knew too, that it was all too true.

Because why else would Morse turn around and look at him in such a way over his shoulder, as if he could not believe that he was condemning him to a night with Jakes, as if he could not believe that Thursday was abandoning him to his fate?

Morse knew it too, that there was some wound there, something he had been avoiding, something that needed tending badly.

And Morse’s instincts were usually spot on, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, y'all! I hope everyone is doing OK!
> 
> <3 <3<3
> 
> I thought it would be better if Jakes and Morse’s long overdue conversation was its own chapter, so it’s coming next.  
> Thanks for reading!


	10. Spark

“What a pain in the arse you are,” Jakes said.

Immediately, the broken light in the depths of Morse’s eyes gathered into cloud, and his brows knitted together thunderously as he turned to glare at him.

And Jakes was glad of it.

He was angry as hell, and that was the truth of it. Absolutely roiling for a good, honest row.

But he did not want to hash out his anger against the wreckage walking along beside him, at this stranger inhabiting Morse’s body, all blown-blue eyes and disheveled hair, at this disaster of a man who seemed already to be on the brink of falling apart, as if he might topple right over the edge with a mere puff of breath.

Jakes wanted to strike out against that conceited little bastard who he had known down at the nick, the man who was not a blur, but who was entirely and from every angle—from his appraising eyes to his austere face, to even the cheap fabric of his damned car coat—so sharp-edged that his very presence could cut like glass. Against the man who had flown into the pub that night with his easy answers and urgent commands.

  
_“Look. We have the chance to bury them. All of them. Come on.”_

And Morse was looking at him as if it were all that simple, as if he could _will_ the strength into him with the intensity of those blue eyes.

But Jakes had crumpled. Buried his face in his hands.

_“I can’t. I can’t. I’m sorry.”_

By the time Jakes could manage to look up again, to look him in the face, Morse was gone.

He had given up on him. Given up on him that fast. Run off as if he could do it all on his own.

He had run right into the thick of it, that scrap of a constable with the soft hands and untested frame of a college boy, who nevertheless had the heart and the courage ten times that of the more powerful men that he went to throw himself up against, in his pride, in his folly.

And then he got swept away into it, into the vortex of the very thing Jakes had feared the most. Swept up while Jakes hung back, stood in the shadows, letting the whole thing happen again as it had happened before.

Just as he had when he had stood in the corner and the towering man clamped his hand on Big Pete’s shoulder and . . . . 

And how dare Morse fall to pieces before him now? Right when he ought to spit in his face?

Not to mention the old man. Did Thursday deserve this, Morse's histrionics? This case, all of these deaths in the woods—the clean scent of evergreen replaced by the copper stench of blood—had put enough demand on the governor’s drained reserves to be going on with. But Morse didn’t think about that, did he? Didn’t think of how Blenheim Vale had affected all of them. How even Mr. Bright, at his age, had faced a crisis of his convictions. How even affable Jim Strange’s friendly round face had grown slightly harder, cannier under the pressure of his shattered delusions.

But no, Morse didn’t think how it had affected the lot of them, each and all. It was all about him, wasn’t it?

What a selfish bastard Morse was, really.

Jakes lit a cigarette with a strident flash of a silver lighter, took a hurried draw and tore it from his lips.

“I thought you were about to make the old man cough up a lung with your dramatics,” he said. “Maybe you missed your calling. It’s not choral singing you should have pursued, but opera. Perhaps the starring role.”

A flicker of something difficult to place passed like a wave over Morse’s strained features. Contrition? Concern?

“What’s . . .” he began.

And then he swallowed, started again.

“There’s . . . something’s the matter with him, isn’t there?”

“What?” Jakes asked. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

Well, of course he wouldn’t know. He had come out here as soon as he had been released, hadn’t he? Hadn’t thought to leave one word, to make one phone call. Because it was all about him, wasn’t it? Always, always. 

“The bullet. From Blenheim Vale. It’s still in there,” Jakes said. “Isn’t that a hell of a thing?”

For a moment, Jakes kept walking, crashing through the trees with a rustle of leaves and a crackle of twigs, not realizing that Morse had ground to a halt, not realizing that he had left Morse paces behind.

 _“What?”_ Morse cried.

He was looking pale, more of a ghost of himself than ever, as if he might pass out on the spot. Jakes had forgotten that, how squeamish Morse could be.

“It’s too close to his heart, the doctors said. They couldn’t operate. So it’s just rattling around in there somewhere.”

“So..... What’s going to happen?”

The barb was there, just on the tip of Jakes' tongue.

_He’ll either live or die, same as all of us. More likely to outlive you, anyway._

But before he could deliver the blow, Morse turned around as if to retrace their steps. As if he thought it was possible to go back, redo things. But he had already said his piece, hadn’t he? Delivered his message of “go to hell” loud and clear?

“Where are you going?” Jakes called.

Morse spun around on the spot. “Thursday . . .” he began, helplessly.

And no. This was not the Morse he wanted to hash things out with. Morse could get that horrified look off his face right now, as far as Jakes was concerned. If he was really sorry, he wouldn’t have been sticking it all to them in this way to begin with.

“Too late now,” Jakes goaded. “Why don’t you give it a rest? He’s been combing around for you half the night as it is. You’d do better to let him wrap it up with DeBryn and go home.” Jakes narrowed his eyes, then, wanting to see that thunderous look again. “Think it through, Morse. You used to be good at that.”

“I couldn’t . . . ,” Morse said, as if offering an excuse. “I couldn’t let . . . I couldn’t go back there.”

Jakes shook his head, pulled his cigarette once more from his mouth.

“He wasn’t going to take you to _prison_ Morse. Not like you were selling whatever the hell it is you’re sky high on.”

“I know. I meant the nick. I don’t want to go there, either. I don’t want to . . .”

Didn’t want to _what?_ How full shit he was. Not go back to the nick, where the crossword lay on his desk like a bloody memorial? Where Mr. Bright was waiting to make his terse and subtle apology? Where even his old job, _Jakes’_ job, was waiting for him as soon as His Lordship decided to get back to work? Where the old man was waiting, all tight indulgent smiles, ready to cluck over him like a mother hen?

Didn’t want to go back? And yet he had expected him to trip along back to that hellhole of Blenheim Vale, as if something as transparent as time could break the horrible spell of that place?

And besides that, to top all, what really drove Jakes mad was the fact that....

“I don’t think he was planning on taking you to the nick, either. I think he was going to pack you up and take you to the missus.”

“What?” Morse asked, his eyes widening. Then, he snorted. “He couldn’t.” 

“His house," Jakes said. “Why not?”

“Mrs. Thursday,” Morse breathed, as if the words were sacred.

Jakes huffed a laugh.

For all of her sweet smiles and matronly tweed skirts, Mrs. Thursday was every bit as tough as the old man. She seemed to feel it assuaged his pride, eased his conscience to let her husband think he was protecting her from the grittier side of life, but she was no dewy-eyed innocent, Jakes was pretty damn sure she knew the ways of the world well enough. Just the other day, as he had stood waiting for the Inspector, she had tossed down a newspaper in disgust over the latest campaign driven on by Mrs. Pettybon.

 _“Decency,_ ” she huffed. “ _Telling people what they should and shouldn’t,_ ” while the old man came into the room, clearing his throat pointedly, as coppers weren’t supposed to have an opinion on such matters, one way or the other.

Jakes had good reason to doubt Mrs. Thursday was the type who would clutch her pearls and swoon at the sight of Morse. Most likely she’d just set his arse in a chair and brew a pot of strong black coffee. Then warm through some leftover stew and watch him like a hawk until he ate it, hoping it might soak up some of the chemicals running through his veins.

Morse stood where he was for a long while amidst the shadows of trees, and then, reluctantly, started toward Jakes again, casting only one last glance over his shoulder.

“That’s it,” Jakes said. “Let the old man have a break, yeah?”

Morse said nothing, only continued on, leading him in what Jakes could only hope was the right direction, rather than taking him in circles. One tree looked very much like another in the enclosing darkness, after all. 

Morse was silent and stayed silent as they went on their way, but maybe that was for the best, maybe that cold air would clear his head.

They walked on and on, and Jakes was just about to ask Morse if he was sure that he knew where he was going, when they came out into a clearing. And there, on the edge of the dark lake, stood a ramshackle gray clapboard cottage, sitting dismally amidst the ancient firs.

The place was so nondescript, it might have shimmered like a mirage into oblivion, disappeared completely into the darkness, if it wasn’t surrounded by flowers—white and gold and palest pink, glowing dully in the moonlight, like small globes of light.

Unbelievable. It wasn’t at all what he had imagined. When Morse had said “lake house,” he had envisioned some rich bastard’s posh little holiday home on the water.

But this. This wasn’t a house at all.

This was a mere fishing shack.

“These your digs?” Jakes asked.

“Yes,” Morse said, primly.

“What’s with the flowers?”

“Long story.” 

Jakes shook his head. Must have cost a pretty penny all of those trappings. Hard to imagine who would bestow a spring’s worth of fresh flowers on someone as wilted and as sour as Morse. Nick Wilding perhaps? Some hippie-trippie psychedelic tribute to his inspiration?

Jakes honestly didn’t want to know. 

“Do you have a telephone?” Jakes asked.

“No.”

Jakes exhaled a jet of smoke sharply at that, sending a gray stream out into the darkness.

“What am I supposed to do if you . . .”

“I’m fine,” Morse said, stiffly.

“Are you?”

Morse’s brows knitted together once more, and Jakes could almost believe it, he was looking more and more his old prickly self.

“My neighbor has one. See there, up through those trees? See the tower? It’s Joss Bixby’s place, right there. He probably has several lines. In case you want to ring to have me hauled away. Or perhaps you could go and call for a cab? You don’t _have_ to stay here. I won’t tell anyone if you go. Not like I have anyone to tell, is it?”

And that rankled, too.

_I won’t tell anyone._

Because he hadn’t, hadn’t he?

And why hadn’t he told anyone?

Because they had been rivals, hadn’t they? From day one. Watching one another warily from across the card table. And all of Jakes’ well-planned out strategies, all of his scrimping, all of his attention to following the rules of the game, the protocol, hanging on to his cards as stingy as a miser, waiting for his moment, his win, had always, always been in vain. At the end of every hand, he was left sitting there with his hard-won three of a kind, just to have the watching crowd gasp as Morse, at the last minute, managed to pull a royal flush up from out of his sleeve.

And then, on that awful night, Jakes had handed him a fistful of aces, let his poker face fall in the worst possible way.

And Morse, as if that would make the game all too easy, as if taking advantage of such a thing was beneath his dignity, had pointedly ignored those cards, the ones sitting there right there at his elbow.

How noble.

It was almost as if Morse was completely unaware of the competition between them. 

Well.

Jakes hated it, being in Morse’s debt.

On that first night, he thought: Morse will never forgive me, now that he’s seen me in my weakness, in my cowardice.

And on the second he thought, I’ll never forgive Morse for having seen me in my weakness, in my cowardice.

Morse climbed up the steps of his clapboard shack and looked down at him, as imperious as a cat on a high shelf, as if he could read all in his face, as if he could see just how much that Jakes resented him.

“There’s a path. Right through those trees. Up to Bixby’s. Why don’t you go up there? Call for a cab? Tell them I sent you. It will be all right.”

Jakes twisted his mouth.

It was a trick, of course. Morse would love for him to go, wouldn’t he? Love for him to go and leave him out here, so it could be all his fault when he had some flashback episode, went wandering around in the woods. So that it could be all his fault when they found him in the morning, laid half open, out under the trees, just like Dr. Lorenz.

“I told the old man I would stay, didn’t I?” Jakes snapped.

Morse looked at him searchingly for a moment, and then turned around, as if his answer was, after all, satisfactory.

They did have that in common, anyway, a grudging respect for the old man.

Funny to think that the veteran copper, with fists like hammers and a gaze sharp as nails, was the only complete innocent in all of this.

Thursday would be stunned if he knew of the sparks of mutual hatred and self-hatred, of the masochistic currents that sizzled like frayed wires between them, his bagman and his former bagman.

Morse went inside the dark cabin and Jakes followed, stood on the threshold as Morse went over to a small table and snapped on a lamp, casting the place in a surreal yellow glow.

The light revealed a surprising jumble of contrasts, all held within four close walls. In some ways, Morse’s fusty little den was as miserable on the inside as it was without, looking like nothing so much as a burrow where some restless animal had taken refuge: a clutter of bottles and a scatter of records, a single bed in the corner, left in a tangle of mismatched blankets. But, bizarrely enough, the original layer of Morse-like mess, had been blanketed over with a very different sort of panache: vases full of flowers and a spread of pink and pale green cakes.

It all had a decidedly feminine air. Perhaps it was not for Morse, then. Who knew what that lot got up to? Perhaps someone else in Morse’s set was using the lake house for their illicit trysts.

If it _was_ all meant for Morse, then Jakes almost felt sorry for whoever thought to shower him with such gifts. They’d do better with second-hand opera albums and Scotch.

Could even be a bottle of the cheap stuff. Wasn’t as if Morse was too fussy these days.

And the proof of it was, as soon as Morse had the lights on, he went straight to the cupboard and pulled down a bottle—utter rot-gut by the look of the label—along with a tumbler. He poured out a glass of the amber liquid, filling it all the way to the brim, and then he drank it down like water.

“Hey,” Jakes said. “Are you supposed to have that?”

But Morse kept his head tipped back, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly with the rate with which he was guzzling it down. Then he set the glass down on the counter with a satisfied clunk and exhaled loudly through his mouth, as if it were on fire.

“Clears my head,” he said. 

And a sad thing, it was. A testament to how far he had gone.

Because, goddamn it if Morse didn’t look slightly better.

Jakes sighed, then. It was all wrong. Had been wrong ever since that night.

He wanted to say, _Pull it together, for God’s sakes, man._ _These things happen. It’s nothing to do with you. Once you let yourself think that it does, it all unravels. You were a cipher, just as much as I had been when I was a child._

_In the end, it doesn’t matter that I was a boy and you were a copper. In the end, it doesn’t matter that I was seven and you were twenty-seven._

_At the end of the day, there are only two types of people in this world._

_Those with power, and those without._

Jakes was startled then, to see that Morse was watching him again, scrutinizing him shrewdly. There was a pause of awkwardness as their eyes met.

“Do you want one?” Morse asked, raising his glass.

“No. I’m on duty, aren’t I?” Jakes said.

Morse shrugged.

“Oh, what the hell,” Jakes said. “Give me a glass. If you have one that doesn’t have a spider living in it.”

Morse pulled another glass from out of his dingy little cupboard, then, and damn it if he didn’t actually look in the thing to check.

As Morse poured out the Scotch, Jakes took another appraising look around Morse’s digs.

Of course, there wasn’t an extra bed. It was a good thing he had come out here instead of Thursday. The old man would have tucked Morse in as tenderly as he once did for his kids, and then would have spent the whole night trying to sleep sitting up in that overstuffed chair. Would have woken up with a pain in his back to match the one in his chest, the one he always pretended was not there. 

Jakes took the offered glass and found that Morse was still watching him, his blue eyes uncanny. Oh, he was still there all right. That big brain of his ticking away, as if he knew everything about him. Everything he was thinking.

“You can take the bed,” Morse said. He took one of the cakes from the table and shoved it in his mouth. Then he pocketed a pack of matches from off the counter and pulled a quilt and a pillow from off the disheveled bed.

He paused for a moment, ruminating on the cake like a cow.

Then he swallowed and said, “I’m sleeping outside anyway.”

_“What?”_ Jakes asked.

But Morse went right by him, right past him, right out the door as if he wasn’t even there.

Jakes stood in the doorway and watched for a while as Morse puttered around in the darkness. He hadn’t the slightest idea what he was on about. He was like a television set on a windy day, Morse was. Just when Jakes thought the picture was coming in clearer, the man disintegrated into wavy lines again. A complete blur.

Morse moved around in the darkness and the chill of the night, amidst the song of crickets sounding all the clearer now that the air was growing more refined with the crispness and clarity of approaching September.

Jakes stood for a long while listening to the sounds he made, sounds like those of a small animal rummaging in the dark, until Morse emerged from the shadows and into the circle of light cast by the house.

He paused and tossed a few logs into a ring of stone. Then he disappeared and reappeared once more, this time carrying sticks and twigs and the snapped ends of fallen branches. He knelt on the ground arranging the mess for a long while, and then he struck a match, and immediately his face was illuminated with an orange glow. He bent forward to breathe on the budding sparks, then, as if he himself was breathing life into the fire.

As the dry sticks began to crackle, the orange flame flowered, brightening Morse’s pale face, highlighting the fear there, the doubt.

_“There was a fire! There was a fire . . .”_

Morse was looking into the fire, doubtfully. It was as if he feared it, but did not know why.

He was coming back to himself, then, the memories fading; it was clear to Jakes that Morse wasn’t sure if what he thought had happened _had_ actually happened, or if it had all been simply a hallucination, the product of a chemically-induced synaptic misfire.

It struck Jakes, then, that this was most likely the last chance to get the truth out of him. Morse was on the cusp of it: coherent enough to answer, but still with one foot in the circles of his mind, like someone waking from the edge of a dream.

What truth Jakes got now might be all that they ever got.

And so he grabbed a throw pillow and an afghan from the overstuffed chair and went out to join him.

Morse added log after log to the fire, watching it gain strength, his face looking clearer in the firelight, more resigned.

He sat down at last, leaning up against a fallen log, cradling his Scotch, glowing in the warmth of it, visibly sighing, unwinding.

Slowly, Jakes walked over and sat beside him.

“So,” he said. “Are you sure? About what you saw?”

Morse looked uneasy, as if steeling himself for a barrage of questions to come.

“Sure about what?” he asked.

“ _What?”_ Jakes asked incredulously.

Morse had said it only twenty-odd times.

“The tiger.”

Morse flinched at the word. And the fear, then was real.

But was the tiger?

“Yes,” Morse said.

Then his face clouded, looking uncertain.

“I . . . I don’t know,” he amended miserably.

Brilliant.

“Did Lorenz talk to you then? Did he really say ‘man-eater?’”

“Yes,” Morse said, this time his voice was stronger, more confident.

What had really happened? It would be interesting to find out how long Dr. Lorenz had been dead. If Dr. DeBryn told Thursday that the zoologist had been dead for hours, for example, then how could Morse have seen who or what killed him?

“I . . . I . . . it was. It was a tiger. It was . . . I _felt_ it,” Morse said. 

“Felt it?”

“I’ve always felt it. Ever since I came out here. Sometimes, I’ll just be walking along, and then I feel it: like there are eyes on me, watching. Just watching. And so I have to stop. Go still. Sometimes I just stand there. For an hour. I just . . . I just _stand_ there. And wait,” he said. “And hope it passes me by.”

He said the words as if he were in an odd sort of trance, looking into the fire. Jakes felt uneasy, a prickling at the back of his neck.

Was this the drugs talking? It didn’t seem at all like the analytical, empirical Morse he knew. The Morse he remembered would never tell such a tale of eyes in the woods, a tale that sounded for all the world to be next-door to a ghost story.

He didn’t know this Morse. But that’s how it always was, wasn’t it? You never quite knew with people, what lay beneath.

Perhaps these fault lines, these odd vibrations that spoke of a man who was not as cohesive as the face that he showed to the world, had been there all along. The glimmer of these cracks had been there, perhaps, right there in his records, all along, hadn't they? Laid plain in black and white?

Hadn’t Morse walked away from Oxford when he was within sights of finishing his degree?

Who works towards something for three years and then walks away from it all without one look back?

“So,” Jakes said. “You think there is actually a tiger. In Oxford.”

He said the words as haughtily as he could, as if to bring this floating, ethereal Morse back to solid ground, mold him into someone solid who he could knock up against.

It worked a treat.

Morse sensed the barb right away; his brows knit together right on cue.

Jakes doubted if Morse would ever be so far gone as to not recognize an insult against his Most August Person.

“Yes,” Morse said, and then added, with a touch of asperity, “Or . . . someone wants us to _think_ that there is.”

And this was better, the waspish face, the flared nostrils, the pronouncement given as if from upon high, as though it were sacrosanct, when it was just a college boy’s trick, a play of semantics.

Because what had he said really, with that fancy little flourish?

That it either was a tiger or it wasn’t.

Anyone knew that much.

Morse might be the conduit of all of the flashes of brilliance in the world, but Jakes had instinct, hard-earned instinct, the product of a childhood strewed with terrors that lay hidden around every corner.

Whatever or whoever it was responsible for these deaths, the epicenter of the whole awful business was Crevecoeur Hall.

Both literally and figuratively.

Georgina Mortmaigne was beautiful, no doubt about it—just his type with those amber hazel cat eyes, with that look that could cut a man to pieces.

But despite it all, even taking all of those piles and piles of money into account, Jakes wouldn’t go anywhere near the girl with a ten-foot pole, not for all the tea in China.

“Those people at Crevecoeur Hall,” Jakes ventured. “They all seemed to know you pretty well. They your friends? From when you were up?”

“Yes,” Morse said warily.

And who could blame him? Jakes had given him a ribbing about that, in the past.

Jakes snorted. “With friends like that, who needs enemies?” he said. “That Georgina Mortmaigne is a piece of work. Slapped you from here to next Tuesday. I thought she might really have a go at you, if I hadn’t drug you out of the line of her fire.”

Morse startled at that. It was true, what Jakes had feared—he was already beginning to forget. They’d get it out of him now or they never would.

Morse rubbed his face, thoughtfully, as if trying to remember what had happened, as if trying to remember whether or not Miss Mortmaigne had truly belted him one.

“She didn’t . . . ,” Morse began. “She didn’t used to be that way. She used to . . . she wanted to be a film maker.”

“A film maker?” Jakes said, surprised by the non-sequitur.

“Mmmmm. She wanted to go abroad, to France. To get away from her family, I think.” 

“I’ll bet she did.” Jakes said. “So. What happened?”

“She fell in love with another student. They got married.”

“She’s married?” Jakes asked. “Where is he, her husband?”

“He died. On their honeymoon. Boating accident.” 

Jakes hissed in sympathy.

That was a tough break.

Morse was silent for a moment, looking into the fire.

“She’s jealous, I think, Georgina. Of other peoples’ happiness. But . . . it’s hard to judge her for it . . . because . . . that’s . . . that’s not who she was meant to be. She knows that she is, knows that it’s not right, how she feels. But she can’t help it. So . . . she hates herself for it, really. She feels angry and cheated and she hates herself for feeling angry and cheated all at the same time.”

Jakes raised his eyebrows. With all of that boiling under the surface, it was no wonder the girl seemed like a bomb ready to go off. 

“You should have seen her in the chapel,” Jakes said.

Morse looked at him, his brow furrowed.

“When you were upstairs. Thursday and I went to talk to her. In the chapel. She was praying, her hands clasped like she might break the bones in them. But when she stood up to talk to us, she was as cool as lemonade. She looked as if she hadn’t been crying at all.”

And Jakes had seen such a thing before, hadn’t he? That steely crack in a conscience? Not in nice, well-bred young ladies, but in plenty of men and women, too, down at the nick, sitting across from him at the interrogation table.

“She’s got something to do with this,” Jakes said. “Actually, I think she’s behind all, one way or another.”

Morse let out a scathing noise. “You think George is running around killing people in the woods? The woods right around her family’s house? She hasn’t the strength to do something like that, even if she wanted to.” 

“Didn’t have a problem turning violent with you.”

Morse opened his mouth to protest, but then he faltered, snapped it shut.

“She was . . . she was just upset,” Morse said.

That’s right, Jakes thought.

Make your excuses.

“You saw Lorenz,” Morse said. “He was. . . .” and Morse paled at the thought of it. “It couldn’t be George. Even if she had a weapon to do something . . . like that . . . . how would she have the strength to wield it?”

Jakes sighed, rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “All right,” he said.

For a moment, they were quiet, sitting side by side, staring into the fire.

“Her father used to keep cubs? Didn’t he?” Jakes asked. “Perhaps she still has one, a tiger. Perhaps she’s setting it on people who she’s got some beef with.”

Morse whisked his head around at that, looked at him as if he were completely barmy.

“Who can control a _tiger?”_

And again, Jakes sighed. “I suppose that’s true. If she could tame a tiger like one of those circus people can, I guess she wouldn’t have gotten herself attacked.”

“Attacked?”

“She was mauled, by one of them. A Bengal. Six years ago.”

Morse looked momentarily stunned. 

“I never knew that. I was in the army then, I suppose. I suppose that’s why they looked at me so reproachfully. Perhaps they thought I was just being cruel.”

“Or,” Jakes said, already following another train of thought. “Perhaps the experience taught her not to fear the animals. Isn’t that how you are supposed to tame them? By not showing fear?”

Morse gave him a pitying look, then. It was annoying as hell being given such a look by a man wearing another man’s shirt, living in another man’s shack, a man whose hair looked like it hadn’t seen a comb other than his fingers for the last few weeks. 

“Do you have any ideas?” Jakes asked.

“No,” Morse admitted. “I just know George wouldn’t have done that. And she wouldn’t have harmed Lorenz.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

Morse hesitated, drew his legs up and placed his hands around his knees.

“She. I think she’s . . . I think she was in love with him.”

“With Lorenz?”

Morse shrugged. “When he was meeting with her brother. She always made it a point to be at the house. And I . . . I saw them once, out in the garden, by the maze.”

“Kept that quiet,” Jakes said.

“I didn’t think it was important.”

“A mess like this? Everything is important. You used to know that.”

Jakes frowned into the fire.

“I was thinking it was Belborough she had her eye on,” he said. 

_“Bruce?”_ Morse asked, distastefully.

“Fell into his arms quick enough. He was still there with her in the chapel.”

“They’ve all been friends since they were _children_. It’s her best friend’s _husband._ ”

Morse shook his head, as if Jakes hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about.

He was condescending a little prick.

It was just like old times.

“What’s your theory then, Inspector Morse?”

“I don’t have one.”

“That’s a load, that is. You always have some crackpot theory or another.”

“No. I don’t. Not anymore,” he said.

“Bullocks,” Jakes said.

“It’s true,” he said “I’m . . . I’m not the same.”

“I’ll say you’re not. Maybe if you cleaned yourself up and got your arse back in to the nick, started eating and sleeping like a normal person, you’d find you could think straight again. Christ, Morse. You’re a goddamned mess.”

“Why should I go back?” Morse asked.

Jakes huffed a laugh. “I would think because you needed a job. Summer’s over, Morse. What? You’re going to stay out here all winter? Wait till we find you half-frozen in the woods like some rough sleeper?”

Morse turned away, made a prissy little face, as if Jakes wasn’t much worth talking to, just when he wanted him to do the opposite. Just when he wanted him to rail at him. Just when he wanted him to turn to him and shout at him.

_Why should I go back to work among men I can’t rely on? To go back with you lot of back-stabbers? Did any of you even have the guts to visit me?_

But instead he turned away, as if Jakes was some bug, far beneath his princely notice.

Again, Jakes was struck by it, by how aloof Morse could be, locked away in his own little world, always turned so inward. It was almost as if he was serenely unaware of the rivalry and tension between them.

Jakes scowled, wanting to get a rise out of him one way or another. “I suppose you’re right. It is too late for you to go back now. I suppose you’ve sabotaged yourself good and proper now. What were you playing at, with that song?”

“What s _ong?_ ” Morse asked.

“Up at Nick Wilding’s place. There was a tape recorder there, with some song all about you. Oh, it was in code all right. _My hopeless endeavour_. Don’t you know your name was in all the goddamned papers? Once that comes out, you’ll be known as the singing copper in more ways than one. It will probably sell a truckload of copies, too. That’s how it always is with these pop stars, once they off themselves through drugs and drink.”

“Why would you say such a thing?” Morse said.

”I told you. Nick Wilding wasn’t as lucky as you were. He’s not dead, but he’s as good as.”

“That’s rubbish,” Morse said. “He was. . . he’s fine.”

“Why would you care?” Jakes asked.

“It’s none of your business,” Morse snapped. Then he looked at him, his eyes narrowed. “If you find me so repulsive, I really wish you'd leave.”

“Oh, don’t give me that.”

“Why not? You alluded to it often enough. _College boy, misfit._ That’s what you were getting at, wasn’t it? Well, there you go. Now you’ve got some new scrap of information to turn over in your sordid, little mind. That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? What team I’m playing for?” 

Jakes grimaced. “I don’t care who you get on with. If you want to play the groupie to some popstar, that’s your affair. But why you should worry yourself about the man is beyond me. Not as if we both haven't seen enough domestics to know how people make excuses.”

Morse made a noise of protest.

“You don’t know anything about it,” Morse said.

“I know enough to know that he tried to drug you senseless. Succeeded, from the looks of it.”

”He wouldn’t . . . .,” Morse said. “He might have . . . . but . . . .he wouldn’t . . . He doesn’t _think_ of it that way.”

“ _Didn’t_ think of it that way,” Jakes corrected. ”If he wanted to trip along with you off go to la-la-land, that’s what he got. We took him up to Maplewick Hall, before we went looking for you. Nick Wilding is a vegetable.”

Morse jumped up, then, and looked down at him, his face full of thunder. Then he wheeled around on his heel and marched right back into his shabby little cottage, slamming the door in a manner that threatened to bring the whole place to the ground.

And Jakes was glad of it.

He hoped he freezed his arse off in that leaky clapboard cabin. Maybe that would get it through his head that summer was over, that he couldn’t keep on in such a way.

Jakes settled down, then, laying the pillow under his head and closing his eyes, basking in the warmth of the fire, a fire that turned the light behind his closed eyelids orange.

Like a tiger.

And then the light was white, as white as a cool new morning, and there was a rumble, not of a tiger, but of a black and mechanized Jaguar.

Jakes sat up, stiff, from lying on the ground. The fire before him was black, riddled with the mere sparks of embers. And the black Jag was there, too, parked under the firs, which had turned from shadow to dark green again in the sun.

In a moment, Thursday was swinging his legs out of the car.

“Sergeant,” he said.

“Sir,” Jakes replied, rising painfully to stand.

The Inspector's eyes scanned the scene, and why should Jakes be surprised?

Even as Thursday greeted him, he was really looking for Morse.

“Morse is just inside,” Jakes said.

“Mmmmmm,” Thursday said.

“I’ll just roust him out.”

Jakes made his way to the door, and Thursday followed.

And somehow, Jakes knew it, knew it before he even opened the door, knew it from how eerily still the place was the moment he stepped foot on that first wooden step.

Morse was gone, leaving only that sad tangle of bedding, like an animal's nest, behind him.

Thursday’s face darkened as he took in the empty room.

“What? Am I his keeper?” Jakes wanted to ask.

But instead, he turned and looked at the old man grimly.

“I know just where he’s gone,” Jakes said.

Thursday raised his head, the question clear in his narrowed eyes.

“He’s gone out on a case,” Jakes said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I couldn't quite get them on the same page yet, but they will reach an understanding in the next chapter!
> 
> I hope this is not going too OOC. Because everything's been turned upside down, I've been writing in such small bursts it's more difficult to manage a long fic like this. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope everyone is well! <3


	11. Turn

As Jakes and Thursday approached Maplewick Hall, they found that once again the doors had been left carelessly ajar.

It was the perfect metaphor for the place, wasn’t it? They just couldn’t seem to be able to tamp it down. Unlike the inhabitants of the other posh piles on Lake Silence, those who dwelt in Maplewick Hall just couldn’t seem to maintain that neat line between the orderly world of a great manor house and the windblown wilds of a green and rain-quenched English summer.

Even as he and the old man were coming up the steps, they heard voices spilling out through the half-open doorway, as if their owners could not contain them.

One was raised and shrill, much like the staccato pattering of rain on glass, the other as low and as modulated as blankets of snow covering the late summer landscape.

Thursday and Jakes exchanged glances; the old man recognized Morse’s voice as well as he did.

They went into the darkened house and started off down the hall, and, as they did so, Morse’s familiar low warble morphed steadily into words.

“There’s also a message on the groove of their LP. YEMLTTHL 4099 . . . ”

“That’s just a matrix number!” the higher voice shouted. 

But Morse went on, just as if the other had not spoken, his voice almost mechanical . . . 

“ . . . . Yet each man kills the thing he loves 4099 the prison number assigned to Oscar Wilde when he was in Reading Gaol. Those flashes. Those flashes of light. That was you all along. _That_ was why you slipped him the LSD.”

Jakes and Thursday reached the end of the hall and burst into the honey-warm light of the sunlit room in which the band had once been wont to practice.

When they were a band, that is.

Jakes very much doubted they would carry on with The Wildwood after what had happened to their leading man.

Morse was right in the center of the room, his hair red-gold in the light, looking thoroughly unperturbed, his face calmer, more stoic than ever Jakes had seen it since they had found him at Lake Silence. He was standing face to face with that brunette, the ‘seamstress’ who had told Thursday to shove off when last they were there, when the old man had asked her about her age.

“Why would I hurt Nick?” she shouted, and her voice had an edge to it that Jakes recognized all too well, the voice of a suspect slowly coming unhinged under DC Morse’s onslaught of intuitive connections and relentless questioning.

“I love him! He loves me! He wrote ‘A Hopeless Endeavour’ for me!”

“No. No,” Morse said. “He didn’t. The lyrics don’t apply to you. _I met you at the edge of the water?’”_

Jakes furrowed his brow as the girl startled, as somehow the realization seemed to hit: Jakes remembered, after all, how the girl had told Thursday that she had met the band after a show, on that day that they had come to inquire about the disappearance of Ingrid Hjort.

The girl stilled for a moment, much as a predator stills before its prey, senses twitching. Jakes recognized the danger there in her eyes before even Morse did, even though he was standing right in front of her, and he was already moving forward while Morse remained standing there, just as he was, even as the girl glared at him, scrutinizing his face as though she’d like nothing better than to tear it apart. 

_“Blue eyes so clever,”_ she said, her voice shifting from piercing and shrill to low and treacherous, and then she whirled about and snatched a letter opener from off of the table behind her, spun towards Morse and raised it so that the golden blade glinted for a moment in the sun, and then brought it down with all of the force that she had in her small but frenzied frame.

Morse stepped forward and raised his arm, taking her wrist in his hand, stopping her movements just as easily as if she had been made of paper. For a moment they simply stood there, the girl struggling to bring down the blade, Morse preventing her with absolutely no exertion of effort. It was an odd sort of stalemate that seemed to go on and on; she hadn’t near the strength to counter Morse’s, but Morse, it seemed, hadn’t the heart to do anything to the girl other than to stop her from stabbing him deep in his chest.

Well, Jakes had no such compunction. He hadn’t been ‘up,’ nor did even own an evening suit. He certainly didn’t revel in the idea of roughing up some sad mess of a bird, but, good god, there was such a thing as a time for action, such a thing as self-defense.

Jakes went behind the girl and grabbed her raised wrist, placing his hand just below Morse’s, and then he pulled her arm down behind her back, spinning her around. She screamed an incoherent jumble of words and then was sobbing, her knees half-buckling under her.

“He loves me! He loves me!” she cried.

Thursday came and clamped one large hand around her shoulder, raising her back up again. 

“All right, miss,” he said, in that low voice that sent her anger to tears… she was falling to pieces now, tractable enough that Thursday had no difficulty in leading her out the door.

“I’ll call for uniform,” Thursday said.

By that Jakes was given to understand that he meant WPC Trewlove. She was just who they needed right now. Neither of them relished the idea of manhandling the girl, but it was clear she was unstable—who knew what might set her off next? WPC Trewlove was just the person to deal with a suspect such as she—she would be able to get her calmed, get her talking, probably have a full confession before they even made it back to the nick.

Jakes went to follow Thursday and expected Morse to draw along beside them. But instead, Morse turned away and began to search the room, half-wildly, opening the drawers of a bureau, flipping through the pages of a book.

“Hey!” Jakes called. “What are you doing?”

But Morse kept on going, with a grim and determined look on his face, pawing through everything in his path. As if he was on the case.

No.

As if he owned the place.

“Hey!” Jakes said. “If that girl poisoned Wilding, this is a possible crime scene you’re interfering with now.”

Morse stopped and looked him dead in the face. And then the bastard turned away and kept right on going. Kept on going as if Jakes’ words had gone in one ear and out the other.

Jakes strode angrily across the room, right as Morse was opening yet another drawer, rummaging through it and pulling out a white envelope. He flipped the closure open and stole a glance inside, and then—right there, right in front of Jakes' face—he went to put the whole damn thing right in his pocket.

Jakes reached out and closed his hand over Morse’s wrist just as easily as Morse had restrained the girl’s just a few minutes earlier. The moment Jakes took hold of him, Morse’s face whipped around—the blue eyes sharp and clear and crackling, full of the spark of mutiny.

“You can’t take evidence from the scene of a crime,” Jakes said.

“This isn’t evidence,” Morse said. “You don’t need evidence. Emma all but confessed.”

Emma. That was it. That was her name.

Jakes grabbed the envelope from Morse. They were a match, he and Morse, but Morse was always a little slow to react when it came to physical altercation, so Jakes—in this if in nothing else—found he had the upper hand. In one deft movement, he took the thing and spun around, turning his back on a protesting Morse, and then he flipped the closure of the envelope open.

The triangle shaped-wedge made visible by the lifting of the flap was all that Jakes needed to see in order to know just what the envelope contained. It was a package of photographs, the one on top revealing a downturned head of auburn curls and a bare, freckled shoulder, with another man’s arm, one affixed with a silver watch, lying limp and heavy across it.

_“All of those flashes of light. That was you, wasn’t it? You knew all along.”_

The mad girl had been taking photographs, then. 

Morse suddenly flew into action, pulling Jakes around and snatching the photos back.

As he did, Jakes' eyes fell upon a mirrored bureau behind him, in which a photo was tucked, one of the girl, Emma, holding aloft a pricey-looking camera.

So. The girl had gone over there. Had documented Morse and Wilding’s drunken little trysts over at Wilding’s so-called “enchanted place.”

But to what end? To blackmail Wilding into going back to her? To blackmail Morse into giving the place a wide berth in future? Simply to torment herself with the knowledge that Wilding, if ever he did have a thing for her, had moved on? That she’d been replaced by a lanky police constable, of all things? One fresh out of prison?

All of the above?

Morse was glaring at him, then, with that ridiculously withering Morse-like glare, as if challenging him to say anything. Looking haughty as hell, as if he, Jakes, was in the wrong.

It would have been funny, if the whole thing wasn’t so bloody sad.

“I wasn’t the one rolling around with some pop star,” he might have said.

And then he ground to a halt.

Suddenly, he felt just as if he was back at that pub, back to when Morse had stood over him like an avenging angel, so damn sure of himself. Suddenly, he felt just as he did when Morse had stood over him, and Jakes’ own words had been mercilessly echoed back to him... because what else was Morse, in that instant, in trying to convince him to come to Blenheim Vale, but one bloody misfit talking to another?

It was just as if he was back to that night when Morse had stood there, the realization dawning in his eyes. When he had stood there, knowing all of his secrets.

Secrets that he never told anyone.

And why hadn’t he told anyone?

Jakes stepped back, relenting.

Because now, their positions were reversed, weren’t they? Now, he had been given a chance at last to absolve himself, to rid himself of that terrible feeling.

Of that god-awful feeling of being in Morse’s debt.

“Fine,” Jakes said. “Take them. If you have any sense, you’ll drop them into the fire. I wouldn’t keep one as a bloody souvenir.”

Morse’s face didn’t change; it remained as set as stone. There was not a lot to him, Morse, but that face, those eyes, were capable of an intensity that could be alarming.

Slowly, Morse took the photographs. And then he drew his hand back, his eyes never once leaving Jakes’ face.

No, Morse hadn’t told anyone.

And now neither would he.

“We’re even now,” Jakes said. And it wasn’t a question.

It was a statement. A statement as clear as a church bell ringing in the frozen skies of winter.

So why should that flicker of confusion... of pain?... twitch over Morse’s pale face?

And then Jakes felt his stomach fall, as if an armload of stones had been dropped unceremoniously onto his gut.

It couldn’t be. 

No.

It could.

And it was.

Jakes realized then, with a dreadful and long-reaching certainty, one that went all the way to the hollows of his bones, that Morse had no idea, until that very moment, what Jakes was on about.

All of this while, even as Jakes had railed against him, Morse had been so absorbed in his own disconnected little world, that Jakes had hardly registered on his radar.

All of this while, Jakes had been playing against an opponent who didn’t even realize that he was in the game, that there was a contest between them.

Jakes couldn’t stand it. It was not to be borne.

Self-centered bastard.

“You’d better just go out the back,” Jakes said.

Morse hesitated.

“Go on, Morse,” Jakes said. “We'll get what we need.”

Morse nodded. It was a formal thing, one rather of out-of-keeping with the events and the circumstances of the day, but one so like the reserved Morse that he once knew that somehow it all seemed to settle into place, and Jakes understood at once that the subtle gesture was meant to fall somewhere between grudging respect and gratitude.

“Go on,” Jakes said, as in the distance an approaching siren wailed.

Morse nodded once more and backed away, as if stepping back from a tiger, and then, once he was at the French doors that led into the garden, he turned away and slipped out into the summer world, the one just outside the glass. 

****

Morse rolled over on the single bed and stared up at the ceiling as the shadows moved from one wall across to the other. 

He couldn’t get the expression on Jakes’ face, those few words to him, out of his mind.

Did he really think, all of this time, that this was some contest between them?

Some game?

What did it mean to win such a game? And what did it mean to lose it?

It was true, of course, that on the night he had flown into the pub, he had hoped that he’d be leaving with a resolved Jakes at his side. He would have been glad of the back-up, glad of another man there, a colleague, to lend him a share of his bravery. And even now he thought that Jakes would have been better off if he had come along, faced ACC Deare as a man, match to match, rather than to allow the ghosts of Blenheim Vale to prevail once more over the boy that was.

But who was he to judge? He had given Lonsdale a wide berth for years after a mere broken engagement. He knew all to well that facing one’s past was often more easily said than done, that it was one thing in theory and altogether something else in practice. 

Did Jakes think all of this time he had been sitting here stewing and blaming him? That his own flight to the lake house was all down to him, to Jakes, all due to his failures?

It had nothing, nothing to do with Blenheim Vale, that which had led him here. Not really.

It was what had . . .

Morse shook his head, tossed the thought away. 

Did Jakes really think the loss of his old self had been all about _him?_

What a self-centered bastard he could be, really.

He wished now that he had spoken further, before he slipped out the door. 

_There was never any competition between us, save the one you forged in your mind. Enough was taken from you as it was, I know._

_I’m not here to take everything else._

_I never was._

Even if there _had_ been a game, wasn’t it clear by now that Morse had forfeited it? He had given up his position as bagman, given up any respect that Thursday might ever had had for him?

He should have said them, the words.

_It’s yours. It’s all yours. Take it with my best wishes._

_It’s not your fault. It was never your fault. I was angry when I first said the words, that day when I stumbled upon you and a disembodied arm, but I meant them all the same._

But even though he couldn’t manage the words, he could see it, in his face, that Jakes had understood at last.

Did things have to go this far for them to finally understand one another?

He might not have said all that he should have, but it would have to be enough.

Morse was quite certain that they would have no problem getting a confession out of Emma. He wouldn’t be needed. He was of no further use to them. He was never any use to them. Standing about, always a step behind, mulling over some strand of poetry.

_How hopeless underground falls the remorseful day._

He was too slow. Had always been too slow. 

But that was all done now, at last. All of it. It was quite possible that he would never see any of them again.

Just as it could be that he would never see….

Morse rolled over and punched at his pillow. It was that book, that ridiculous book, that Nick so took as the gospel. He hadn’t meant him any harm. He knew it was spiked, the wine, but not that it had been _poisoned._

Still, in some corner of his mind, Morse knew that even that was something he should have deemed unforgivable.

But he didn’t have it in his heart not to forgive him. It was all that book, that book Nick so believed in.

_We live together—we act on and react to one another. But always, and in all circumstances, we are by ourselves._

_The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone._

_Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain._

_By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude . . ._

A solitude that Nick had believed that a handful of chemicals could transcend.

_Meet me on the edge of forever, my bitter, sweet Endeavour._

It was terrible, what Nick had done, Morse knew, but when he turned the night around in his mind, let the light fall upon it from another angle, looked at it through Nick’s gas-fire blue eyes, from within his confused and misguided mind, he also knew that Nick had honestly meant to be of help to him. Didn’t Morse want to escape, didn’t he yearn for someone to take him away from this place?

And that was precisely Nick’s intent.

To take him far, far away. Further than Morse had ever wanted to go. 

It was there, right on that tape, on the reel of tape he had found on the recorder in the sunlit room. Jakes had mentioned a song, and, curious, Morse had pressed the button.

_It's no journey for a love faint-hearted_

_But once we fall, well be never parted._

That was all he meant. Nick didn’t know.

_He wouldn’t do that to me_ , Morse thought. _He wouldn’t do that to me._

“He wouldn’t do that to me,” Morse said aloud to the ceiling.

“Do what?”

Morse’s heart went still for the briefest of instants and then leapt in his chest, a chill coursing through his veins, leaving him almost weak with it.

What do you do when the voices in your head answer back?

He sat up, abruptly from the pillows, to find Joss Bixby, his arm raised at an odd angle, standing in the door.

“You might have knocked!” Morse shouted fiercely.

Bixby’s full mouth quirked into a bemused smile, and he nodded toward his upraised hand.

“I did,” he said.

Morse scowled. That door. That goddamned flimsy excuse for a door. How could he ever have thought he would be safe here? They found him, they all had found him, they would always find him. Tony and Kay and Bixby and Thursday and even Jakes now knew where to find him.

“I’m not receiving visitors at the moment,” Morse said.

A ludicrous thing to say really, as if he were an earl in a manor house rather than a nobody from nowhere holed up in a shack.

“So please. Just go away.”

He collapsed back down onto the pillows. He hadn’t the strength to deal with the man and his schemes and his dreams and his glittering and breath-taking and dangerous sense of unreality. Bixby might live up in the clouds, but as for Morse, there was nothing but cold and hard reality, as cold and hard as iron bars and . . .

And, incredibly, the man remained just where he was. Hadn’t he made himself clear?

“Are you alright?” Bixby asked.

“I’m fine,” Morse said.

“Kay said . . .”

And it was too much. What? Was he grist for the Lake Silence gossip mill already?

“What did Kay say?” Morse demanded, tearing himself up again.

Bixby shrugged. “That you were at Crevecoeur Hall last night. That you weren’t well. And then. Well. Everyone’s heard about what happened at Maplewick Hall.”

“Oh. Have they?”

God only knew what version of events had begun to circulate around. What would they make of it all? And of Nick? Nick, lost and gone? Would he be a villain or a victim or a tragic antihero, taken before his time, to be set amongst the pantheon of troubled pop stars who self-imploded in one way or the other?

One or two or all three, surely, anything but who he really was. Just one more confused person, making his way along sharp stones. 

Morse lay back amongst the pillows, determined to deter any further interaction with the man, but Bixby, incredibly, remained where he was. 

“You needn’t be so angry. Kay was discreet.”

“Wonderful,” Morse said. “I’m glad.”

“Look here, old man. I know you’ve been through rather a bad time. But I don’t know why you should snap at me. I haven’t done anything to you, have I? I don’t presume to interfere with . . .” and here he smiled, indulgently, as if Morse were a child having a fit of bad temper. . . “with whatever it is you think you’re doing. I simply came by to invite you to a party.”

Morse sat back up, and damn it if he couldn’t feel his hair falling in an odd way as he did so, spiraling up as he tore his head from the pillow. He must look an unkempt wreck after the night and the day’s events. Couldn’t even his hair spare him some small scrap of indignity? 

“A _party?_ ” Morse asked incredulously.

The man was mad. Was there anything about his manner at all that might give the impression that he might be in the mood for one of his cursed parties?

“Yes,” Bixby said. “I thought it might cheer you up a bit. I’m having Antonia Marchetti sing tonight. You know. The Florentine Nightingale.”

Morse stilled, confused.

“Antonia Marchetti? How did you get her? She’s going to sing at your party?”

Bixby spread his hands wide, as if he had too much class to refer obliquely to money, but still, as if to suggest, ‘if one has the means.’

But why? The man had said before that he was looking for a band to replicate the music that was playing on the night he had met Kay at the Belvedere, to try to recreate that spell, the magic that had fallen between them. Why would he hire a Florentine opera singer for the evening?

The stupid man. The stupid, stupid man.

“Why?” Morse said. “Kay hates opera.”

“She doesn’t _hate_ opera, I’m sure… “

“Yes,” Morse said fiercely.

Hadn’t she expressed her distaste for his records often enough?

“Yes, she does,” Morse said. “I know she does.”

“Ah,” Bixby said, his face a bit crestfallen. “I didn’t know.”

“Well now you do,” Morse said.

And the words were there, right on the tip of his tongue:

_Add it to the list of things you don’t know about her._

Because one thing was becoming increasingly clear. He didn’t know her. He didn’t know one thing about her. He had met her on a night long ago, and from that night, he had constructed a world built on a daydream. Kay was beautiful and charming and, above all, she knew her powers all too well—friends that they were, it was no use pretending. Sometimes she, like all of their set, flirted just for the fun of it, just for the pure hell of it. And it seemed, for once, as if she had half begun to believe in her own game. 

Because Bixby, for his part, played his role all too well, didn’t he? He presented himself as everything he was supposed to be, down to the last button. No wonder Kay had been carried away. She had fancied herself in love for a night, imagined a whole, separate possible future, closed her eyes and dreamt, and, in the cold light of morning, she had gone ahead and done what she would have always done in the end. She had gone ahead and married Bruce.

They were in love with the idea of each other. They were a disaster waiting to happen.

He was about to say it, to say all of what he thought, but something inside checked him.

He may well have fallen to many things, but he was not cruel.

Bixby seemed impervious enough, a great man in a great house, but, in reality, the man was just like his dreams: as fragile as a bubble that floats like a wish, aloft over the gardens, over red roses beautiful and sharp with thorns.

True the words may be, but Morse would not be the one to say them.

_What do you know of Kay? Can she really give you all that you want? She can’t take back the past five years. Those will always stand, come what may._

Instead, Morse said, something quite different.

“The music doesn’t matter,” he said. And how had he become such a liar? Of course, it mattered, it was all that mattered. “She’ll love the party, I’m sure.”

Bixby regarded him for a moment, his expression for once thoughtful behind the handsome and lighthearted mask, one as constant as the sun. 

“You sure you won’t come up old man? You might enjoy it. ‘Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent,’ as they say.”

“No,” Morse said.

“Well. If you change your mind. You know where to find me. Just pop on over, alright?”

“Hmmmmmm,” Morse said.

Anything to get the man to leave him in peace.

Bixby stood in the door for a moment, and then, miraculously, his shadow slipped away at last.

Morse remained just as he was, just as he had been, as the light continued to change from white to gold to blush to indigo around him. And then he got up and went out the door, that door that could not keep one person out—not Bixby, not Thursday, not Kay, not Jakes, no matter how much he might wish it—and walked out into the gathering darkness.

Slowly, he stripped off his rumpled clothes and hung them over an overhanging branch, and then he walked into the lake. The first star had appeared over the fir trees, as bright as a mirror, reflecting rather than twinkling, so that Morse realized it must not be a star at all, but rather a planet—Venus from the intense whiteness of it. 

As the sky purpled and then darkened, more stars appeared, each blinking into existence on a different note, so that the starlight seemed to resonate like music.

And where was Nick now? Was he there, somewhere?

Was it true what Emma had said, when he had finally run across her, after he had wandered about Maplewick Hall and found it deserted?

 _“Where is everyone?”_ he had asked, but what he meant of course was, where was Nick?

_“They’ve all gone up to London. They’ve taken Nick to see a specialist. His mind's gone, Dr. Bakshi said.”_

Morse stood in the lake until the cold began to turn his limbs numb, until the sky turned as dark as the water, wishing, not for the first time, that he believed in something.

And the starlight shone like the music that he so wanted, so needed. It was a lie what he had said to Bixby, that the music didn’t matter. It was everything. It was the only thing you could trust.

Or maybe not all. Because now he regretted them, those words.

_“When are you going to tell me your real name?”_

_“Hmmmm?” Morse asked. “Oh. I suppose never.”_

_Nick pulled away, then, so that they were looking into one another’s eyes. “When are you going to trust me?” he asked. “Huh?”_

_“That’s simple,” Morse said. “Same answer.”_

But I wanted to, he might have said.

I would have done.

I did.

_I do._

_“If would try, if you'd endeavour . . . if you'd let me call your name.”_

“He wouldn’t do that to me,” Morse said again, and then he turned away, and slowly made his way back to the shore. 

Once he had dried himself and wrapped himself in a towel, he gathered his old clothes and went back inside. Then he pulled his evening suit off from the back of a door, the strains of music already coursing across his synapses, playing like light through his veins.

That was how he lived now.

When he wanted to go somewhere, he went.

And when he found he didn’t want to be there anymore, he left.


	12. Glimmer

Morse made his way across the shadowed lawns towards Bixby’s great stone palace of a house, lit so that it shone with all the brilliance of a hundred suns, and—as he came at last onto the winding drive—he cast one last look over his shoulder. 

There was no turning back now; with each step he was drawing nearer, like a moth with dusky and tattered wings, circling closer and closer to the light, to the flame. 

Everywhere about him, cars were pulling up, parking haphazardly across Bixby’s freshly-mown grass, divesting themselves of party-goers in evening suits and jeweled-toned gowns, all spilling out into the night in clouds of perfume and of cigarette smoke and of laughter, their voices carrying with an excitement that was contagious.

And perhaps Morse, too, was not immune. Because he, too, could feel it, the excitement in the air—and something more as well, some new freshness, deep and crisp and full of promise, a cool glimmer of fall, when the year turns, softens, and all things begin anew.

By the time Morse reached the front doors, he had merged into the jostling crowd. No longer was he so alone, after all, but merely one of an endless sea of bodies . . . coming to seek and to find. . .

. . . _what_ , exactly?

The spectacle within allowed one to forget oneself for a while, Morse supposed.

Was _that_ why they were all here?

And then that feeling of solidarity, of the nearest thing to hope, faded and died, leaving him with a strain of a sadness that he could not name.

Was that why they were all here?

_I called for madder music and for stronger wine, but when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, there falls thy shadow, Cynara . . ._

Morse looked about at the guests, all smiling and calling out to one another, wearing all of their best brightness clear on their faces, and he wondered: what shadow did they carry? What brought them here? What were they trying to forget? 

It was all smoke and mirrors, all if it.

But what else was there to hold onto in a world of illusion? In a world where everything falls to pieces in the end? Crumbles like dried leaves at your feet, shatters like glass?

It was with heavier steps that Morse entered into the Great Hall at last, into a tempest of music and of dancing and of roving lights—rose and soft blue and chartreuse green—spinning and sweeping in circles over the crowds. Along the winding staircase, great clusters of translucent white balloons cascaded downwards, glowing in the lowlight like the moons of distant worlds.

Morse stood for a moment in the midst of it all, in the midst of the dancers twitching and jerking like masked marionettes, and, suddenly, a rainshower of golden glitter burst from the ceiling, spiraling down and down, much like the flash of falling birds, their feathers caught in the sun in their last flight. The crowd cried out in exaltation as the flecks of gold flickered and flashed about them, but Morse didn't see what was in it, really.

Everything falls, everything crashes down in the end. It was best to keep your head down. To hope against hope the storm passes you by.

And so Morse bowed his head and went on, threading his way through the crowded room.

And then, before he had make it even halfway across the hall, he plowed headfirst into one of the dancers.

Morse startled under the impact and looked up. It was Georgina, once more spinning about with her small video camera, held up rakishly over one eye. With her other eye closed tight, it was almost as if she was half-blind to the world—as if, in looking through the lens, she was already seeing into the future, imagining the party as it once was, as if the night had already been reduced to a reel of tape, spinning and spinning, flickering black and white images onto a screen.

Who would watch this night unfold, in the future? What would they make of it, of this moment?

Morse shook his head slightly, as if to bring himself back into the present.

"George," he said. "Sorry."

Georgina lowered her camera at once, her face pale, save for her wine-dark lipstick, her expression suddenly solemn.

"Pagan," she said. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," Morse said.

She gave him a wan smile. "I'm so sorry Pagan. About last night. Will you ever forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive," Morse said, and it wasn't a lie; he could barely remember what had happened at Crevecoeur Hall. The entire night had melted down into little more than a thick pool of color and sound, of his own voice ringing wildly like the clanging of a bell.

_"The tiger. It was a tiger!"_

"Are you sure? I was so beastly to you. Just beastly," Georgina protested. "I haven’t been able to think of anything else since."

Morse was about to say it—that it was he who was sorry, sorry to have brought up a painful memory. He must have been a sight, bursting into their dinner party, weirdly insistent on that one mad point . . .

_"It was a tiger! A tiger!"_

. . . a point that now seemed only as a glimmer of orange flame, as an electric pulse, sparking like some broken synapse from within his own mind. _I didn't know_ , he wanted to say.

But he didn't think Georgina would appreciate it, knowing that Jakes had told him of the tiger attack. If she wanted to have told him about what had happened all those years ago, she would have told him.

Sometimes we come to hate those who know our secrets.

Jakes had been proof of that, hadn't he? 

And perhaps it was true for him, too.

No. There were some scars better left alone.

"It's nothing," Morse said. "Please don't think about it. I don't want to think about it," he said, and again, truer words had never been spoken.

Georgina smiled once more, a little sadly, and then she did something that surprised him, something that she had never done before; she reached up and cupped his face in one hand and kissed him soundly on the cheek.

"Thank you,” she said. “Kay was right. You are a perfect rose, Pagan. A perfect, perfect rose.”

Morse snorted at that, and her smile deepened, and then she disappeared into the crowd, holding her camera once more aloft, preserving this night for eternity.

Or, at least for the life of the celluloid.

Morse grimaced. God only knew where Kay had gotten such an idea to begin with. If he was a rose, he most certainly was a wilted one. A trampled one, even, left on the floor at the end of a party.

  
He turned away, and he had just come to pass the bottom of the staircase, when a second shower of golden glitter came cascading down around him, igniting with sparks like the blaze of a phoenix's wings.

Morse couldn't help it; he couldn't help but to look up, after all, as if to trace the source of the shimmering rainfall, and, as he did so, he saw their host, Joss Bixby, one hand poised on the banister, making his way down the sweeping stairs.

Bixby smiled as he approached and extended his arm toward him, as if bidding him to remain where he was, as if the gesture alone might keep him firmly in place. 

And it did; Morse drew to a halt, despite himself, couldn’t help but return the man’s smile, however ruefully.

"What's this?" he called, in his old refrain. "Eat, drink and be merry?" 

Bixby’s smile deepened so that it reached his dark eyes, warming the lights in them like the sun on water, and then he set his hand firmly on Morse's shoulder, as if to steer him through the crowds.

"As the fellow said," Bixby agreed. "You only get one go around the board."

The crowds parted for Bixby as if by magic, and Morse allowed himself to be guided along, Bixby's arm encircling him, keeping him planted at his side as he took him through room after room—ivory and gold and deepest vermilion—all ablaze with red party lights, lights meant to cheer, but which reminded Morse of something else, of flames in the windows of Nick’s enchanted place, and of his own voice crying out into the shifting haze.

_"There was a fire! There was a fire!"_

And where was Nick now? Was he really gone, as Jakes had said? Or was he somewhere else, in some world in between, imprisoned in his own body, waiting, trying to be heard? 

"You're right on time," Bixby was saying. "I was wondering if you might turn up after all. It would be a shame for you to miss Signora Marchetti sing."

Morse's mind barely registered Bixby's words, full as it was of fires and tigers . . . of . . . and of all of those old fears.

Perhaps it was because the fears that could be named were more easily dealt with than the ghosts of the mind, the ones sneak up on you in the darkness, that come right through the gaps in the bars?

"Here," Bixby said at last, indicating a round table before the stage. "Best seat in the house, how’s that, old man?"

Morse nodded, dumbly, his thoughts a hundred miles away, and sat down. He expected Bixby to leave him there, to go to attend to his other guests, to go to look for Kay, but, much to Morse's surprise, Bixby pulled back a chair and sat down beside him, just as if he had no where else to go, just as if he was taking the night off, playing the guest at his own party. 

Morse wasn't quite sure what to say to the man, wondering what it was exactly he had heard about the night before—or, more specifically, what he had heard about _him—_ but that hardly mattered; in the space of a moment, a silence had fallen between them, much like the hush of coolness and starlight.

They were within and without—at the center of the party and outside of it all, watching the party-goers like players on a stage pass in a current around them.

Morse sat there, taking it all in, and it was an odd sort of comfort, this sphere of silence. He wouldn’t mind actually if time were to leave him here, just as he was at this moment, alone and not alone.

But then the music of the party faded, and the lights rose, and the guests—realizing that something unexpected, something new, was about to happen—began to trail in greater numbers into the room. A group of musicians forming a small orchestra came before the stage then, and settled themselves into chairs set in half-rings. Then the lights lowered, grew softer. The crowds gathered closer, and their conversation fell into low murmurs. 

Bixby sat back in his chair and folded his arms, looking as pleased as a cat, as expectant as a child who had closed his eyes and blown the seeds from a dandelion clock into the wind and was now waiting for the magic he had wished for to take effect, to be made real before him. 

It was all a part of the show, Morse understood that well enough.

Bixby was a man who obtained things—and, somehow, tonight, he had managed to engage Antonia Marchetti to sing at his party.

Like all showmen, he hungered for an audience, needed someone to beguile with his stunts and spells and magic tricks, and so Bixby was watching him eagerly, as if waiting to catch the expression on his face—that of perhaps the one person in the room who would fully appreciate what feat he had pulled off in persuading one of the world's most lauded sopranos to sing at a private party.

It was maddening, really, the feel of those eyes on his face. Morse didn’t like it, the scrutiny. It was the reason, after all, why he had chosen his strange exile at the lake house.

He didn’t want anyone to see him.

Although, somehow—he thought ruefully—he had been making a spectacle of himself ever since, hadn't he? 

Morse shook his head as if to rid himself of the awful thought of it, of all of the past week.

And once more, despite himself, he felt drawn to look up at Bixby, to look into the eyes that were so trained on his face.

Morse scowled, disapprovingly. Just because he wanted to hear the music, didn't mean he was caught up in Bixby's hall of illusions, didn't mean he was foolish enough to believe in the man's hat full of magic tricks.

He gestured then to their surroundings, to the kaleidoscope of colors revolving around them. "You can have too much of a good thing, you know," Morse said, pointedly.

Bixby made a scathing noise and put one broad hand over his where it rested on the table.

"Of course, you can’t," he said. "Of course you can’t, old man." 

But there as a trace of laughter there, too, even of self-depreciation, hidden in his heartfelt words.

It was as if Bixby had said, _"Of course it’s all over the top. But it’s all in good fun, isn’t it?"_

As if he had said, _“You may feel as if you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. But you’ll like it. You’ll see.”_

Just then, as if on cue, Antonia Marchetti came out onto the spotlit stage, and the surrounding lights softened even further, throwing the party into darkness, cueing the guests, who fell utterly silent, waiting to see what new entertainment was about to play out before them. 

The orchestra began to play, and then, as if she were above any sort of preamble, Marchetti lifted her head and began to sing—it was “Ah, Je Veux Vivre,” from Gounod's _Romeo and Juliet,_ an odd choice perhaps, but perhaps then again not, for such a party. 

Morse found himself sitting up straighter in his chair; it was as if all the golden glitter that had cascaded down into the hall earlier that evening was gathering, rising upwards, trilling higher and higher on each golden note.

_I want to live_

_in the dream that thrills me_

_more of this day!_

And he did, didn’t he? He did want to live. It was why he kept it up, that dreary round. Wake and sleep and wake again. Chop wood for the fire. Wait for something that would take him away from here, from all of it, from himself.

_Let me stay asleep_

_away from the dreary winter_

_and savour the rose's scent_

_before it withers . . ._

It was dizzying, the way the song wavered, spiraling and spiraling; it was as if an invisible string ran through him, pulling him up and up, and as he listened, he found himself leaning forward, further and further in his chair, as if in a moment he might reach out, try to grasp the quivering sounds in the fist of his hand.

All the while, Morse was aware that Bixby’s eyes were on him, heavy like a weight even though he himself was very near to weightlessness. But he didn’t care. Because it _wasn't_ all smoke and mirrors, was it? 

Music was real, it was the only real thing, more real than the the flash of a tiger through the trees, more real than the flame. 

Suddenly, he was far away from all of it: Bixby and the splendor the hall and the gathering crowd; suddenly, he was somewhere elsewhere, far away, off on a rooftop, the marbled sky falling into a whisper of a sunset against the domes and dreaming spires of the Oxford skyline. 

_“How do you do it?” he asked. “How do you leave it all at the front door?_

_“Go home,” Thursday said. “Put your best record on. Loud as it can play. And remember: there’s something the darkness couldn’t take away from you.”_

So much had been taken from him in the darkness, but that one thing, it seemed, had remained, that one glimmer of some other world.

The song played along the edges of his mind, and his hand was on the edge of the pit, fingers working in the soil as if to pull him up, into the sun.

There must be _somewhere_ to go, some way out. Some way to go other than backwards. Not Lincolnshire, Not Oxford, not the army, not the police.

He was using up worlds faster than he could find them, that was the trouble.

But no. There must be _somewhere._

At the end of the third song, the spell that had fallen over Morse was broken, as Antonia Marchetti bowed her head and left the stage, a little haughtily, leaving one to wonder just how much Bixby must have paid for her to have appeared in such a place at all. 

Morse, coming back to himself, turned to Bixby, only to find that man had gone, and Morse was surprised to find himself oddly disappointed. 

But Bixby had a party to host, after all. Perhaps he had managed to give Bruce the slip in the crowds, had managed to find Kay.

Morse rose, and, with nothing else to keep him there, he went back out through the blazing funhouse of rooms lit by colored lights, rooms filled incongruously with heavy gilt mirrors and Gainsboroughs, a slapdash of muslins and silks and porcelain, all thrown together as if to impress rather than with any sense of taste or restraint.

It was all too much.

And so he stepped out of the French doors and went outside, out to where guests holding drinks in long and careless fingers were milling about by the swimming pool, and then he turned away, headed down a meandering garden path, following the soft glow of Japanese lanterns that hung in the branches, until he came around a darkened corner and drew to an abrupt halt. 

There, in the shadows, Bruce and Georgina were locked in a fast embrace, kissing as though they each needed the other's mouth to breathe. 

And Morse’s heart went cold at the sight.

And oh, no.

No, no, no, no, no.

He stepped away, quietly, and tuned in the other direction, feeling like a stone sinking fast to the bottom of the lake. Jakes had been right, in his assessment, after all. Morse never would have believed it.

He knew that Georgina was lonely, had felt cursed, almost, since James’ death.

_We’re bad blood, the Mortmaingnes. Rotten through and through. I’ve tried to be good . . .”_

But this? Kay had been one of her closest friends, and George had been the only one to stand by her through all of her misery with Bruce.

Which Bruce was adding to, even now. What was he playing at? He knew the depths of Georgina’s loneliness, knew that she was easy prey.

And what was he doing here at all, when until now he had been so keen to trail Kay or Bixby? Was this his way of pushing matters to a head? For they did seem perfectly poised for Kay to stumble upon them.

It had been Kay, always Kay, who had been first to suggest that they go out into the gardens, as if she knew the starlight and cooling air suited her own frosty beauty—or, no—more likely, because it suited her restlessness. The midnight picnics, the midnight swims had always been her idea, at her prompting. At Crevecoeur Hall, she was always the one to suggest a late night dash through the maze, their confusion compounded by the utter darkness—and, for the others, in those days, by copious amounts of alcohol—in what would be the perfect metaphor, it would transpire, for their later years. 

So. Kay and Bixby, wanting to escape prying eyes at the party, might very well choose to stroll along this way . . and what then? Was Bruce hoping to force Kay's hand? Would Bixby expect her to announce she was leaving Bruce, to say that she never loved him? 

Whatever was to happen, Morse wanted no part of it. He had already put too much of a hand in things as it was. It was best to do nothing. And the words rang through his mind, the same fading ones he remembered as he lay on the pillows of Nick's enchanted place. 

_He was like Peru, Zavalita was. He’d fucked himself up somewhere along the line._

But surely that meant he’d rendered himself incapable of damaging anyone else, at least?

Didn’t it?

He turned and found another path, one that led out to the trees, and he followed it until he came to a dock at the edge of the black lake. And then he went out to the edge of that, too, as if keen to put as much distance between himself and the party as he could. 

And then he simply stood there, for what felt like a long time. Stood and thought of how there was neither love, nor honor, nor friendship in this world, how all was as transient as the summer grass, how all was fading, turning colder, and how he was turning colder with it.

_"You can’t stay here,"_ Jakes had said, Kay had said, Tony had said.

But he could, he wanted to, to turn to frost, to . . .

. . . to just not have to _think._

The lake lay at his feet as still as a silver mirror in the moonlight, reflecting the overhanging trees above in its glass surface, creating a perfect replication of worlds. It was if the branches of the trees above were reaching down and down, towards their twin images, as if they might clasp hands with the branches in the water below.

“Ah. There you are, old man."

Morse came back to himself with a jolt. Then he looked up, sharply, and frowned.

It was Bixby, standing at his ease at the base of the dock. What was he doing out here?

“What are you doing here?” Morse asked. 

Bixby hesitated, seeming almost to draw back at this unexpected salvo of negativity, his dark eyes liquid with moonlight, suddenly uncertain. Morse found he could hardly blame him; the words had flown out of him far more aggressively than he had intended them, darting from him like birds of prey.

For a moment, they simply stood there, face to face, in a silence that seemed to go on and on. Morse didn't like it, didn't like the feeling of standing on the end of the dock, with Bixby barring his way, hemming him in.

But then Bixby smiled, a sad sort of smile, half-contemplative, half-bemused. “I was looking for you," he said. "Signora Marchetti is back on stage, and I was rather hoping _someone_ would enjoy it." 

Morse felt the tension in his shoulders ease at the small instance of humor, his stance relax, and he snorted softly. Much as he loved opera, years of communal living had taught him all too well that it was not a universal favorite.

But then, he had all but told Bixby as much, all but told him opera wouldn't be the thing for one of his parties, wouldn't help him to recreate the spell of the night long ago, the night when he had met Kay. 

"Besides," Bixby said. "I wanted to clear my head."

Morse frowned. Bixby seemed in an odd mood tonight, fey. It wasn't like him at all. He seemed troubled, and what thoughts might trouble Bixby? He was a creature possessed of one goal and one goal only. He knew what he wanted, was set on attaining it. Wherefore lay any cause of doubt?

Bixby wandered out onto the dock, then, as if musing at the novelty of the hush of the world around them.

"If you lost someone you love, wouldn't you try to get them back?" he asked, apropos of nothing, just as if he was picking up the strand of some previous conversation.

But why should he ask such a question of him? That was the whole point, wasn’t it?

He might be doing that right now, looking for Kay at the party, so that whatever disaster that was to happen might happen, resolve itself at last one way or the other.

He might be doing _anything_ to further his agenda other than coming out to here, waxing metaphysical at the edge of a deserted dock. 

Morse stood for a moment, considering him. There was a strange and new and unexpected sadness in the shine of Bix’s eyes, one that seemed to reach out towards him, to call up something in his chest, so that Morse found himself wanting to tell the man whatever it was he wanted to hear, if only it would restore the ridiculous, laughing host of the party.

But Morse felt it, instinctively, had seen with his own eyes the fawning crowds: the men who wanted to talk business, the women who watched him as he passed, no doubt sizing up his bank account along with the figure he cut in an evening suit.

Every king needs a court jester, someone not afraid to tell the great man the truth.

 _So . . ._ he thought.

_Let me be the court jester._

_Let me tell him the truth._

"You can't turn back the clock," Morse said.

"Of course, you can. Of course, you can, old man."

But, of course, it was pointless.

Bixby stood and looked up into the sky, and the starlight suited him, softened him, made him to seem quite different than his persona of the Great Bixby, the gracious host sweeping down the stairs and into the party, quite different than the man who was larger than life, uncomfortably restless in Morse’s small cabin, pawing through his records and pacing about. Out of doors, standing side by side, it was as if he had shrunk to his proper proportion, become someone real at last, so real that Morse might reach out and brush his hand across the five o'clock shadow already darkening his face.

Bix turned and smiled, and it was that same sad and complicated smile, almost as if he was apologizing for not being quite the simpleton Morse had taken him for.

"On a night like this, a man might believe that anything is possible," he murmured. 

The faith with which he said the words was too raw, too much, and Morse wanted to look away, but he found that he couldn't. And how long had it been since he had looked into someone's eyes like this, rather than casting his gaze downwards, turning away?

"Why do you do it?" Morse asked, at last. 

That, at last, brought a glimmer of light to Bix's eyes, a small smile.

"To prove that I'm as good a man as Bruce," he said simply. "As good as any of them." 

Morse said nothing, mulling that over. There was some insecurity there, some greater lie behind the mask. He must certainly not be all that he seemed, to take boorish Bruce for the gold standard.

And then Morse said it, and it cost him very little, because the words were true.

"Well. They're a rotten crowd, really. Careless. You're worth ten of Bruce," he said. 

And the smile warmed and deepened. 

"Thanks, old man," he said. 

Another silence followed, one rather less comfortable than the first, and at last, Morse extended his hand.

"Good luck," he said. 

But rather than to take his hand, Bixby merely looked at it and laughed, as if to dispel his little show of formality.

“You aren’t leaving yet, are you?" he asked, his showman's voice back again, mock-horrified. "I told you, Antonia Marchetti is singing another set. it would mean the world to me, if you would come back up to the party."

And then, he did take Morse's hand, but rather than to shake it, he used it to pull himself forward, so that his face brushed against his, so that he might whisper conspiratorially into Morse’s ear.

"She didn’t come cheap you know. I’d feel much better knowing it had been worth it to someone." 

Bixby drew away then, watching Morse’s face, at once delighted and daring him to contradict him.

"I might have told you," Morse replied, "that opera might be a little out of keeping with what the crowds expect."

"Dash the crowds!" Bixby said. "What do they know? Am I right, old man?" 

Morse couldn't help but quirk a small smile. "Right." 

Bixby laughed then, and the showman slipped back into place, the glimmering mask set back before the sad eyes, a change to make one’s head spin. Then Bix's arm was once again planted firmly around his shoulder, guiding him back up to the party, and, as they walked, Bixby cast his face back up to the skies.

"You were reading Greats, at Oxford, Tony said."

"Yes," Morse replied, cautiously. He couldn’t help but wonder what else Tony had said about him. Doubtless, at this point, the gossip might fill volumes.

"I bet you know all of them, then," Bix said, "all of those half-mad stories told in the constellations."

"I suppose," Morse said.

"I can only ever find Orion's Belt myself," Bixby said. 

"Hmmmm."

"And, well, the Big Dipper, of course," he added. 

Morse startled at that and looked at him, confused, but Bix kept his face turned upwards, his lips playing on the edge of a smile, with an expression full of wonder, full of his wretched, dreamy hope.

Whereas for Morse, the spell of the night was once more broken, his mind whirling again with thoughts unbidden, as if he were a detective constable, scrutinizing a witness's words for their true meaning. He couldn’t help but wonder if Bixby had meant to let the mask slip, if it had been intentional at all, or if it had been an accident, a mere oversight.

Even a master of deception, one supposed, cannot play a game forever, without pausing to take a breath. 

Bixby caught the wondering look, and Morse recovered himself, searching for something to say.

“I would imagine that the party will be winding down soon."

"Winding down?" Bixby said, as if Morse’s words were anathema. "Morse. The night is just beginning." 

*****

"I've done your sandwiches," Sam called. 

Thursday stepped into the small kitchen, where the curtains in the window over the sink seemed to glow, infused with a homely yellow morning light.

"You didn't have to do that," he replied. 

Sam shrugged. "Told mum that I would while she was at Aunt Reenie's." 

"Mmmmm," Thursday rumbled. He glanced at the sandwich wrapped in wax paper before placing it in his pocket; Sam was a bit more sloppy in building the sandwich, but, as such, he was a bit more generous with the corned beef.

"Your mum should go away more often," Thursday said, with a lightness in his voice that he hadn't realized, until then, had been missing for weeks. 

It didn't escape Sam's notice, either. 

"Is everything all right?" he asked, a crease forming between the brows of his usually carefree face. 

"Oh. Just work, you know. Some things get you more than others."

Sam nodded, as if he understood. And perhaps he did. He was a man now, had become a man without him noticing. It must have been happening all along, Sam and Joanie growing up. It had just taken a month in hospital—a month without seeing them as they came and went each day—for him to notice it. 

"Everything all right with you?" Thursday asked.

Sam looked surprised.

"Me?" 

"We don't get to talk much." 

"Hard to get a word in, with mum and Joan around," Sam said, huffing a laugh. 

"I know," Thursday said. "It's funny, there's never enough time to say the . . . the things you mean to . . . the things that you should. The things that matter. I'm proud of you, you know that?"

Sam, rather than looking pleased, looked more concerned than before. It wasn't like him, he supposed, to wax so tender. But maybe it should be. Maybe it should have been, all along.

"When it it you go off on your basic?" Thursday asked. 

"End of the month," Sam said, relived almost at the grounded question. 

"That soon?" 

Sam shrugged. "That's the Army." 

"Sure it's what you want?" Thursday asked. "I always thought you'd end up in some cushy number, clerical. Nine to five. Somewhere you could wear a clean shirt every day."

Thursday regretted the words as soon as he had said them; he had expressed such thoughts to Sam often enough before. 

"Yes, it's what I want. To see the world," Sam replied.

A bit of a romantic notion, Thursday thought privately, but perhaps there were some things a young man needed to see for himself.

Although wasn't that the game he had been playing with Morse? Waiting and waiting for him to see for himself that he could not go on in such a way? Why couldn't it be as easy, talking with Morse as it was with Sam?

Thursday felt that had tried everything with Morse—tried lecturing him at that miserable little shack, tried leaving him alone, tried bringing him with him back to the goddamned house.

And why wouldn't he simply come along in the car with him? Was it the enclosed space of the car that he was afraid of, that he didn't trust, or was it he, Thursday himself?

Everything was a struggle with Morse, everything ended in disaster or a stalemate, nothing seemed to get through to the lad. Thursday had paced around and around his former bagman as if he were a tiger, as if he were half-afraid of the lad, afraid of pushing him further away.

Perhaps it was because he felt he had not the right to interfere, to speak to him as he did with Sam. He was not, after all, Morse's father. Wasn't like he had all the answers, not by a long shot. 

But, still, Thursday found he could not give up on him. It was still there, that glimmer of the Morse he knew.

What had he been doing out there, at Maplewick Hall, after all, but solving a case? 

He thought he had him: _Look,_ he wanted to say, _See there? You can pretend you don't care about anything all you want, but you can't fool me. You do care. So much you don't even begin to know what to do about it._

But Jakes, inexplicably, had let him slip off, without even questioning him properly. And how was it that Jakes' mania for protocol could fail him at that crucial juncture?

The bell rang, then—Sergeant Jakes, surely, at the door, but Thursday found he didn't want to answer it, didn't want to leave Sam on a negative note.

But again, Sam seemed to understand.

"This with work," he said. "Whatever it is, you'll get him."

But Thursday's thoughts had wandered so far onto a darkening path, that, for a moment, he wasn't sure if Sam spoke of the murderer in the woods around Lake Silence or of Morse. 

"Will I?" Thursday asked. 

"Of course," Sam said. "You're my dad."   
  


Thursday felt a lump in his throat despite himself, at the realization that someone should still have such faith in him, a faith that he felt he hardly deserved. 


	13. Flash

“It’s so hot,” Kay said. “Open a window.”

“They’re all open,” Bruce replied. “We can’t open anymore.”

Kay sat slumped in an overstuffed chair with one slender arm flung lazily over her head, and, at Bruce’s words, she let it fall, like a lifeless thing, into her lap.

“Then call for an axe.”

Morse wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and took another draught of Scotch on ice.

He could scarcely remember how it was that they—the last guests standing at Bixby’s party—should have ended up here, at Crevecoeur Hall. But now that they were assembled in this crucible of a room— watched by the startled eyes of the trophy animal heads on the walls— it seemed to Morse that it was inevitable.

That it was just where they had been headed, all along.

Somehow, Morse could sense it, the same danger in the air that he often felt in the woods. And just as in the woods, he could do nothing but to go still, to hope it passed him by.

He took another drink, draining his glass, and tried to put together the broken pieces of the previous night.

“Let’s go for a drive,” Kay had said, once the party had faded down into a hush. “We’ll put the top down, and feel the wind in our faces, and it will be just like we are young again. Won’t it?”

And so they had piled into two cars—Bruce’s sleek black sedan and Bixby’s canary yellow coupe—and set off through the dark fir trees, into the dusky predawn.

Morse, ludicrously enough, had found himself riding with Kay and Bixby, wedged between the pair of them in the front seat like some sort of chaperone, like a daft maiden aunt, but he had been too drunk at the time to see the irony of it.

“Let’s go to Crevecoeur Hall and have a run through the maze,” Kay said, then. “Remember what fun that was, Pagan?”

As Morse recalled, it had not been fun.

He didn’t drink in those days, and he had found it to be the worst sort of loneliness, wandering through all of that shrubbery in the dark, cold-stone sober, while the others laughed and called to one other, together in their own separate and elated worlds.

But Kay did not wait for an answer. She turned and stood up in her seat, even as Bixby continued speeding through the trees, and waved to bid Bruce and Georgina and Tony, riding along in the car behind them, to follow, while Bixby—ever-obedient to Kay’s every whim—turned off the main road and headed up to Crevecoeur Hall.

Once they arrived, and after another round of drinks, however, they soon found that a familiar sense of lethargy had fallen over them.

No one seemed all that keen on it, a plow through the maze.

After all, they had outgrown such amusements, hadn’t they?

Wasn’t life enough of a puzzle as it was?

“We’ve gotten old,” Kay said, sadly. “If we were young, we’d go out into the gardens. If we were young, we’d rise and dance.”

But they were too tired to dance, too tired to make their way through the maze.

Too tired to do anything but to sit and drink and complain about the heat, a surprise after the cool of the night, a surprise considering . . . 

“It’s the first of September,” Morse said. 

They all turned to look at him. 

“Is it?” Bruce asked. 

“Yes. I just realized. It’s my birthday at the end of the month.”

“Well,” Bruce said. “Happy Birthday.”

Tony narrowed his eyes at his cousin in reprimand, and Bixby set his glass down smartly on the table. 

“Why not let him alone, old man,” Bixby said. 

Bruce turned to face him, surprisingly agile, light on his feet, despite his bulk.

“That’s a great expression of yours, isn’t it?”

“What is?” Bixby asked 

“ _’Old man.’_ Where’d you pick that up, anyway?" 

“Oh, must you go on about it? It’s so boring,” Kay said. “If you are going to make personal remarks, Bruce, I won’t stay here another minute.”

She extended her arm to him, then, holding out her glass. 

“Pour me another Scotch.”

Bruce did as she asked, but as he did so, it was with a glance at Bixby, a possessive glance, as if to make sure he took note of it, of the fact that it would be he who would be fixing Kay’s drink. 

“That’s fine,” Bruce said, as he made his way over to the bar. “Because I have just one other question for Mr. Bixby.”

Bixby rolled his glass in his long fingers, watching Bruce appraisingly. “Oh? And what’s that?”

“What sort of row are you trying to start in my house, anyway?”

And the room went still. 

“He isn’t causing any row. You’re causing a row,” Kay said crossly. “Show some self-control.”

“Self-control,” Bruce said. “Is that how you’d put it? I suppose it’s the latest thing to sit back and let a nobody from nowhere make love to your wife. ‘ _Be cool, man.’_ Is that what they say these days?”

Bixby was watching Bruce carefully, as if Bruce were a predator pacing about, half-mad from being hemmed into too small a cage.

“I know I’m not as popular as _The Great Bixby_. I don’t throw a lot of big parties. But then again, I suppose you have to make your house a pigsty to be popular these days.”

“Bruce,” Georgina began, a hint of warning, a hint of a plea, in her voice. 

Morse scowled. It was little wonder that Georgina should be confused. Just the night before, Bruce had kissed her in gardens alight with the soft glow of Japanese lanterns. And now it seemed he was hell-bent on reclaiming his possession of Kay.

What was it that Bruce wanted, exactly?

It was as if he was realizing that he had held Kay too loosely in the palm of his hand, thinking he might take his pleasure where he would, and it was only now—now that it seemed she might be slipping out of his grip—that he seemed to put a proper value on her again.

They were each sizing the other up, the four of them, willing and unwilling participants in a love quadrilateral gone badly wrong—Kay and Bruce and Bixby and Georgina—poised to pounce, caught up in their own primal undercurrent of tension . . . while Tony, divinely unconcerned, sipped his Scotch.

Morse looked to Tony, relieved that he was not alone in this, that he was not to be the only spectator to the long-awaited disaster: Tony, after all, could always be counted on to reel Bruce in with one sharp word, if things went too far.

They were like their own strange and inward-turning cult, ready to tear the heart out of one another and . . . they were just like . . . .

“The Leopard Men of West Africa,” Morse said.

“What’s that, Pagan?” Bruce asked shortly.

And.

_The case._

What had he told Jakes? It was either a tiger or someone who wanted them to _think_ it was?

“The Leopard Men of West Africa,” Morse said. “It’s a cult. It reached its height about twenty years ago, in Nigeria and Sierra Leone. More than one hundred deaths— performed by an executioner called the Batti Yelli, who dressed in a leopard skin robe and mask. The chosen victim was slashed with a ceremonial steel claw. Perhaps these death in the woods might be a case of someone reenacting something similar.”

Morse looked about, his pulse quickening with this new revelation, and was surprised to see that, instead of wonder in the others’ faces, there was something else there—something closer to pity.

“Pagan,” Kay said, in a manner in which one might comfort a child.

“What in the hell are you talking about?” Bruce said. “My god. Are you on something again?”

“Let him alone, Bruce,” Tony said, wearily. 

“Yes,” Bixby agreed. “We all know what your real trouble is, after all. What’s really bothering you.”

Bruce turned to him again, his face haughty, as if surprised that someone such as he might dare to infer the inner workings of his mind. 

“And what’s that?” Bruce asked. “ _Old man?”_

“Your wife doesn’t love you.”

A second silence, more icy than the first, blew through the room, then, like a blast of cold wind, clearing the air of all else. 

“She’s never loved you,” Bixby said quietly. “She loves me.”

Bruce snorted. “You must be mad.”

But Bixby went on, undeterred. “She’s never loved you. She just thought it was too late to back out once she realized the truth of it. It was a terrible, terrible mistake. But all of this while, all of these five years, in her heart, she’s never loved anyone but me.”

Kay rose, suddenly, from her chair. “Let’s not do this. Let’s go home.”

Something in Bixby’s eyes wavered at her words—that uncertainty that Morse had seen in them as they stood on the dock glimmering once more in their dark depths—while Bruce, filled with a righteous incredulity, rounded at once on Kay. 

“You’ve been seeing this man for five years?”

“No,” Bixby said, striding around him to stand between the pair, with an alacrity akin to desperation. “We couldn’t meet. But both of us have loved each other all of this time. And you didn’t know. You’ve never known. I used to laugh sometimes, to think of it.”

It was an odd thing to say, because, for once, there was no trace of laughter his eyes.

“That’s a lie,” Bruce said. “Kay loved me when we married and she loves me now. And what’s more, I love Kay, too.”

The disbelief that filled the room must have been palpable, because Bruce pressed on. “It’s true. Sure, I go on a spree now and then, but I always come back to her. She knows that I love only her.”

“You’re revolting,” Kay said, with an unexpected iciness.

“It’s alright, Kay,” Bixby assured her. “It’s all over now.”

But Morse was not so sure: The energy between Bruce and Kay, that of a stone rolling dangerously down hill, but rolling nonetheless, seemed to leave a charge in the air; it was as if there was some current there, roiling and unseen, that Bixby was struggling against. And he was just beginning to realize it.

“It’s all right, Kay. Just tell him the truth. Just tell him what you told me—that you never loved him—and it will all be over,” Bixby said.

Kay looked at him through a veil of tears and spoke with a voice that she herself did not believe in, with so much self-loathing that Morse had to look away.

“How . . . how . . . could I possibly love him?”

“Kay . . .” Bruce said, his voice suddenly low, husky. “You never loved me? Not even when I carried you in over the puddles in front of Lady Mathilda’s?”

“No,” Kay said.

“Not even when we stood on the bridge, and I proposed to you?”

“No . . . no . . .”

“Not even those nights in Paris, when we walked along in the rain?”

“No . . . I . . .”

And then she spun around, back to Bixby. 

“I _can’t_ say it. I can’t say I never loved him. I can’t say it because it wouldn’t be true.”

“Of course, it wouldn’t be true,” Bruce said, their two voices tangling together like a refrain, like a chorus in a play.

Bixby’s eyes were as two suns falling into a sea in the tropics, at once dying and blazing with one final flash of light . . . and there was a fierceness there, a passion hidden under the guise of the poised gentleman that had previously gone undetected.

Morse had been right, then.

Bixby was not all that he appeared to be. 

“You never loved him. You’ve loved me,” Bixby insisted. “All of this time.”

“I _do,_ ” she cried. “I have loved you. But I loved him, too.... You.... You ask too much, Joss!” 

And it seemed strange that she would address him thus, by a name that Morse had scarcely ever heard him called, but it seemed fitting, too. In that moment, right as his dream was fading into a cold mist before his very eyes, Bixby seemed as someone quite different from their glittering host standing on the brink of a staircase.

He was just one man, waking out of a dream, startled to find that what he had so vividly imagined was not real, after all. 

“You’re delusional,” Bruce said. “Loved you for five years? The truth of it is, she’s never even _thought_ of you. How could she ever love someone like you? Someone who should consider himself lucky to bring her groceries at the back door? Oh, yes. We all know what you are. A _fraud.”_

And his words must have cut through to Bixby, cut straight through the mask, because he pulled himself up to his full height then and threw himself forward, so that he was standing inches from Bruce’s self-satisfied face.

“Better a fraud than a Blackshirt bastard,” he snarled. 

And Bruce hauled off and struck him hard across the face, sending him spinning.

Morse leapt between them—not so much to defend Bixby from Bruce, but rather the other way around. Bruce, in all of his bluster, had missed it, had missed the danger in Bixby’s eyes. 

“Bruce, please!”

“What? Are you his big pal, now?” Bruce shouted. “It’s time you remembered who your real friends are!”

If Morse had a retort, he soon lost it, lost it in a screaming peal of tires from outside the row of high windows. 

For a moment, the air changed again, as they looked about at one another. 

“Where the devil has George gone?” Bruce asked, at last.

“I’d say she left,” Tony said, with an archness that led Morse to believe that he was not the only one who knew that particular secret.

Bruce looked annoyed, as if it was a personal affront to him that she might go, and the man was unbearable.

_Unbearable._

“Who can blame her?” Morse snapped. “What with you messing her about?”

Bruce raised one eyebrow, stepped back, considering him. “I think it’s well past time someone made you a strong pot of coffee.”

“It’s true,” Morse said. “I know. I saw you.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Morse could see Tony shake his head slightly, as if to silence him, as if he felt that he was doing all the more damage.

But Morse was done with it. _Finished_ with it. All of their lies and lies and . . .

“No,” Kay said. “Not George. She wouldn’t.”

The misery in Kay’s voice was tangible, and for a moment Morse wavered, realizing Tony might well have been right, after all. Actresses and bus conductresses and girls Bruce chatted up at parties at Maplewick Hall, all that she knew. But not her best friend, too. 

_Et tu, Brute?_

“I'm . . . I’m sorry, Kay," Morse said. “But it’s true.”

Kay stood before him, her eyes once more slowly filling with tears, and then she spun around and flew out of the room. 

“Oh, good show,” Tony said. “That was well-handled.”

Tony’s note of disapproval led Morse once more to rethink what he had done. But why should the blame fall on his shoulders? 

It was Bruce’s fault that he had to tell her such a truth.

It was all of their faults for tolerating such abundances of lies and lies and . . . So many that they had created a maze out of them, a maze every bit as real as the one in the garden, one impossible to navigate.

He was sick to death of all of them. What had he ever hoped to find here?

“I’ll go to her,” Morse sighed. “I’ll . . . I’ll talk to her.”

He set his glass down and narrowed his eyes at them all as he swept from the room, as if warning them not to follow.

Besides, Morse knew where Kay had gone, knew her favorite place at Crevecoeur Hall: it was the perfect place to be alone, the stone bench at the center of the garden maze.

*****

There are cases in which the answer is clear right from the start. And then there are those that are a bit like an Impressionist painting: stand too close, and it’s all dots and brushstrokes; stand back, and then the picture comes into view.

And then there are those cases that are solved in much the same way as one might look through a camera’s lens. It’s all a blur to start with, a confusion of leads: but when you turn the lens and focus closer and closer in, all the extraneities click into place, revealing an image sharp and clear.

That was just how it was on that Friday morning, when every new piece of evidence uncovered was like one more twist of the lens, shedding clarity on the whole sad and twisted affair.

“Dr. Lorenz’s assistants have been going through the inventory, and it appears there’s a vial of musk that’s gone missing,” WPC Trewlove reported, standing in the doorway of the main office. “Might explain why he was in such a tetchy mood before his death.”

“Musk?” Thursday queried.

Trewlove nodded. “There’s a chap called Challer in India. According to the boffins, he’s been developing a theory that when a tigress comes into season, she marks her territory by spraying the area with her distinctive scent, to show she’s receptive to mating.”

“And that’s this musk, is it? Does it have any commercial value?”

“Not according to Dr. Lorenz’s colleagues,” she said. “Purely scientific interest.”

“Mmmmmm. Thank you, constable.”

Thursday frowned, considering. Lit the pipe that he shouldn’t be smoking, but which helped him, these days, to think.

Tiger musk. 

Why would someone steal such a thing? What the hell could you do with the stuff?

The only possible use it could have was to . . .

Well.

To lure a tiger.

****

At the night school, Jakes and Thursday stood in a long corridor that smelled of cleaning wax, speaking to the two classmates Phillip Hathaway had told them had been close to Ingrid, Clarise Hutchins and Tonya Slater. 

“She was upset a month or so ago,” Clarise admitted, her arms folded before her. “We went round to hers, to walk together to class, and an au pair who used to work for Dr. Lorenz was there. She had had a bit of a thing for him, Dr. Lorenz, but she had seen him together with Ingrid apparently . . . and . . .” 

“And what?” Thursday asked.

“She told Ingrid . . . . that she was going to write to her parents . . . to tell them what was going on.”

“And what _was_ going on?” Thursday asked.

The girls exchanged glances.

“The truth can’t hurt either of them now,” Thursday said. “But it might help us to stop whoever killed them.”

Tonya looked to Clarise, and Clarise nodded, encouragingly.

“That they were lovers,” Tonya said. 

“I see,” Thursday said. 

And there they were.

Morse, it seemed, had been wrong on that point, after all. Even Lake Silence gossip got it right every now and again.

Thursday sighed, half-cursing himself.

It wasn’t Morse’s misjudgment that rankled, but his own.

Thursday had stood in Nick Wilding’s island pavilion and had listened to Morse spin out his theories as if he were still his bagman, a detective constable looking in on the scene.

When, instead, he was a part of the picture.

Of course, Morse would not want to believe that the rumors that flew about from party to party at Lake Silence had any validity.

Not when, no doubt, so many were about him.

So. What they had, then, was a love triangle in which two of the parties were dead. Ricky Parker had thrown them off at the beginning, but now it was clear that the unfortunate boy had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They’d had one false lead after the other, but at the end of the day, the motivation behind the murders was one as old as time.

Some rejected lover was seeking his or her revenge. 

Someone, it seemed, had taunted a tiger.

***

Jakes and Thursday walked through the woods, further and further into the trees, and at last, they found it, a wretched and unloved little shack that made Morse’s lakeside cottage look like a palace.

The wood was worn and half-rotted; it was not so much a cabin but a loose structure of boards nailed haphazardly together, leaving large gaps open to the air. One good breath was all that it would take to do the whole place in, as a matter of fact.

Jakes toed his shoe in the straw that lay at his feet, revealing a bloodied rag that looked like it had once been a shirt. 

“Sir?” Jakes called. “Sir!”

Thursday strode over to Jakes in ten paces, so that he was standing just behind his sergeant’s shoulder, taking it all in.

Jakes stooped, then, and picked up a wallet.

“Is it Goggins’?” Thursday asked.

Jakes flipped the wallet open and looked inside. “It’s Goggins’, all right.”

Thursday nodded grimly and walked along the perimeter of the building; off to the side, an odd sort of structure had been tacked on, as carelessly as an afterthought. The front was of the enclosure was made of wire mesh, so that it resembled a cage.

Thursday stood before it, and then he narrowed his eyes, hardly believing what was there, right before him.

There, right in the wire mesh, was a snatch of orange fur.

Christ.

Morse was right on one thing, after all.

It was a tiger.

Thursday walked inside cautiously—could the animal be here somewhere still, lurking about?—and then he went up to one of the walls, running his hand along the deep claw marks there.

“He’s had a tiger here,” Jakes breathed, from somewhere behind him. 

“It’s hardly big enough to house a dog in,” Thursday said in disgust.

“The thing must have been driven half-mad, locked up like this.”

Jakes stopped in the doorway of the enclosure—of the cage—and examined the latch. “He’s come out to feed it and forgotten to latch the door properly.”

Then he ducked his head, toed once more through the grass, revealing a torn red blouse.

“Ingrid was wearing something like that, wasn’t she?” he asked. 

“The tiger’s dragged her back here,” Thursday said. 

“What it could carry,” Jakes amended.

Thursday grimaced. Because they had already found the rest of her, hadn’t they?

Slowly, he revolved in a circle, as if to measure the place in his mind. By god, it was a small space for such a large and powerful animal. 

“Why the hell would you want to keep a tiger here? How could he afford to feed it for one thing?”

“I don’t think he did,” Jakes said, wryly. 

“That vial of musk,” Thursday said. “Taken from the research center. That’s somehow part of it.”

“All of it, I think,” Jakes said. 

Thursday nodded. In those five words, he understood.

Jakes had gotten to the same place he had. 

The handkerchief found with Ingrid’s body had been identical to the one they had found on Lorenz. Whatever had been on the handkerchiefs had brought the tiger straight to them. 

He walked out of the cage, then, as something in a nearby tree, something bright and red and out of place, caught his eye. 

It was another white handkerchief, strung up in a tree with a bit of red wool. 

The same red wool that Georgina Mortmaigne had been working when they had first gone out to Crevecouer Hall. 

And suddenly, Thursday remembered Georgina Mortmaigne’s face, pale at the news of Hector Lorenz’s death. 

_“Stop it, Pagan! Just stop it! There can’t be a tiger!”_

_“He can’t be dead! I was only talking to him a few hours ago!”_

Suddenly he remembered Morse, being led from the house in a fog, his big eyes roving about, studying every detail of his surroudings even in the state he was in, his gaze lighting on a bit of red wool hanging from a tree outside.

_“Red, red, red melted days run in the fiery forgotten sun ensanguining the skies, how heavily it dies, into the west away.”_

What was it, Morse had said to Emma Carr, out at Maplewick Hall? The words hidden in the anagram on the Wildwood’s record? 

_Each man kills the thing he loves._

And perhaps each woman, too. 

Thursday went back to the car and radioed the extra patrols that Mr. Bright had set on the area since the death of Hector Lorenz—the third death in the woods around Lake Silence in the space of a week—and was surprised when Mr. Bright himself answered.

“I think we're going to need your assistance,” Thursday said. “Out at Crevecoeur Hall.”

***

Thursday and Jakes got out of the Jag and slammed the car doors, while the patrol car carrying Mr. Bright and two uniformed officers pulled up just alongside them.

Immediately, Thursday felt his heart go cold—as if the cold metal bullet, like a shard of ice, had shifted deeper into his chest.

All along the hedgerows, hanging from branches, were white handkerchiefs tied with strands of red wool: the same red wool Lady Georgina had been working as she sat alone, like Arachne, out on the stone front steps of the house. 

She had realized, then, what she had done. And now she was trying to lure the thing back again. 

Although what was she imagining she would do with the animal, once she found it? 

Three men in evening suits, who Thursday recognized at once as Anthony Donn, Joss Bixby and Bruce Belborough, came out of the doors and started down the steps, no doubt alerted by the wail of the sirens, their faces full of a cautious curiosity. A moment later, Guy Crevecouer, who must have been in another part of the house, came out to join them. 

Thursday felt a moment’s relief that Morse was not amongst them. He’d been in the thick of it enough for the past week.

He started off to meet them, when Geoff Craven, the land agent, came striding along, his usually hard face drained, looking utterly dumbfounded.

“It’s here,” he said. 

“What’s here?” Thursday asked, feeling he already knew the answer. 

“The tiger. It went into the maze.” 

“But Kay is in the maze,” Belborough said, his usual blustery voice faded to a rasp. “With Pagan.” 

_“Pagan?_ ” Mr. Bright asked, carrying a rifle and coming up to stand alongside of him. "Who’s this?"

 _“_ Morse,” Bixby corrected.

“What’s this?” Mr. Bright said, disbelievingly. 

“Morse, sir," Thursday said. 

“Morse,” Mr. Bright said. “Good heavens.”

For a moment, it was all Thursday could do but to stand and swallow against the pain of it, against the taste of copper rising in his throat, and to forbid himself by sheer force of will to cough. There was no time for Blenheim Vale now, no time for the past. Not when any chance for the future hung in such doubt.

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t.

Far in the depths of the maze, they were getting to the heart of it, to the heart of it all, to what lay like a bullet so close to his heart.

It was impossible that Morse should die like this. Not with so much left unsaid between them. 

****

Thursday reached the bend in a seemingly endless wall of perfect green shrubbery, and then he took a sharp left, winding inwards and ever inwards, closer and closer to the center of the maze.

He was striding down the next, shorter, stretch of turf, when he heard it: Morse’s familiar voice, low and resolute, but cracked, nonetheless, with a telltale tremble of fear. 

“When it jumps, you run!”

“No,” a woman cried out. 

_“When it jumps, you run!”_

Thursday cursed under his breath and broke into a run, Mr. Bright and one of the uniformed officers just a pace behind him.

He rounded a final corner and flew into the green quadrant at the center of the maze, where Morse stood against the hedgerow, his face pale but his stubborn jaw set, his arms held stiffly at his sides as if to shield Kay Belborough, who was sobbing onto his shoulder behind him.

Thursday hadn’t realized until that moment what a dreamy quality Morse’s face had taken on since he’d found him here, in his self-imposed exile in Lake Silence. It had been as if, all of this while, only half of that big brain of his had been keeping tabs on things, while the other half had wandered off somewhere, god only knew where. 

But now it was clear that Morse was seated firmly in the here and now, his wide eyes round and watching, as across the grass, a tiger prowled, step by step, making its way towards him, steadily closer with each swing of its powerful shoulders.

Morse’s chest heaved visibly, but he held his stance, steady in the face of the Bengal’s approach.

In the very next moment, before Morse could draw even one more breath, the tiger reared and then leapt into the air, and Morse turned away, putting his hands up to his face and throwing out his shoulder as if he hoped his extremities might bear the brunt of the inevitable attack.

And then a shot rang out. 

And the tiger collapsed. 

And Thursday was halfway across the square of green—halfway to Morse—before the frightened crows could even cry out, fly off in a rustle of wings, off into the sky.


	14. Leap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all of your kind comments on the last chapter!  
> I can't believe, after all of this time, that I finally made it to the part that's in the summary! 
> 
> There are two paragraphs, towards the end, that are a bit racy, but it's still just rated M. I just thought I'd let y'all know. They're fairly brief, so if you prefer, you could most likely just let your eyes glaze over those... 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading ...:D

“Morse!” Thursday bellowed.

For a moment, time seemed to slow, as a murder of crows cried out and lifted off from the trees and into the sky, startled by the reverberating echo of Mr. Bright’s gun. 

Kay Belborough was sobbing, one hand placed over her mouth as if to steady her breathing, the other burying into Morse’s shoulder in a death-grip, holding onto him fast, even as he leaned over to vomit perfunctorily into the shrubbery.

“Morse,” Thursday repeated, hoping for some reassurance, some cognizant response. 

“All right? Morse? Is he hurt?” Mr. Bright called. 

Thursday drew up short, then, heaving a heavy sigh of relief.

There was no sign of blood at all, no violent tears in the fabric of Morse’s evening suit. The lad was whole and unharmed, if bent and stooped, bracing his hands on the tops of his thighs as he struggled to regain his composure, pale and utterly drained by wave after wave of nausea—as well as, no doubt, by the surreal turn of events. 

“No, sir,” Thursday said. “Touch of shock is all.”

Mr. Bright nodded and went to stand as if in mourning over the sleek body of the fallen tiger, its plush fur as orange as flame in the midday sun.

“Damned shame. What a magnificent creature.”

“You had to, sir,” Thursday countered. “It was Morse or the tiger.”

“Of course, of course,” Mr. Bright said. “Damned shame, all the same.”

“Sir.” 

Mr. Bright gave Morse a once-over then, his eyes narrowing to a squint as the sun glinted on his frames of his horn-rimmed glasses. Even as he assessed their one-time DC, his lined face remained utterly calm, as if the unspeakable had not just happened. 

“Right-O. No harm was done, then,” he said, matter-of-factly. “That’s the main thing. Nothing to worry about.”

Morse managed to straighten, then, as Kay Belbrough turned to sob into his chest. He put one arm around her and looked at Thursday with such an expression of startled incredulity that Thursday found he could almost read Morse’s thoughts, there in the blue eyes blown wide. 

_Surely, Mr. Bright must be joking?_

_Did he miss the part where I was nearly killed by at tiger?_

_A tiger?_

Thursday had to turn away to hide his strained grimace of a smile. 

There was not a damned thing funny, of course, about any of it, but there was something there in Morse’s expression—some sense of self-awareness, of humor, even, in his horrified disbelief at Mr. Bright’s understated words, some familiar echo of the sort of face that he might once have pulled down at the nick, that made Thursday feel, for the first time since he had found him at Lake Silence, that Morse might be all right, in the end, after all. 

“You’re all right, Morse,” Thursday said, reaching out to rub his back as one final spasm of nausea overcame him, sending Lady Belborough to leap back and Morse to wretch once more into the shrubbery.

They were the same words, Thursday realized, that he had said on the night they found Morse running through the woods, on the night Nick Wilding had been reported missing.

But this time, Thursday believed them.

****

They made their way out of the maze, Morse and Lady Belborough looking rather the worse for wear, despite their formal attire.

Or rather, perhaps, because of it.

It did add to the sense of unreality, seeing them dressed so—like the last survivors of a soirée gone badly wrong in some old horror film that might play down at the Roxy—drawn and empty-eyed, stumbling out into the day.

Lady Belborough was wearing a white evening gown, but her elaborate updo had begun to come loose, and tendrils of hair that had escaped their pins had fallen to her shoulders. Morse’s evening suit was decidedly rumpled, and his hair, never none too tidy these days, was standing out all ends, as if he had stuck his finger into the nearest electrical socket.

But despite the odd juxtaposition of elegance and dishevelment that Morse and Lady Belborough presented, Donn, Belborough and Bixby seemed relieved to see the wayward members of their party all the same. Belborough broke away from the half-circle at once, closing the distance between him and his wife in only a handful of strides, and Lady Belborough collapsed into his arms as he closed his eyes and pressed a kiss to her temple.

Joss Bixby, his typically suave and composed expression gone—flown off somewhere with the scattered and crying crows—put a hand on Morse’s shoulder, his eyes searching his face. 

“You all right, old man?” 

“Yes,” Morse said. 

It wasn’t until Thursday heard Morse’s voice, unfamiliar and decidedly raspy, that he realized it was the first time since the near-attack that Morse had spoken. 

Bixby smiled encouragingly, a hint of color returning to his ashen face. 

“It was a tiger,” Morse said, blankly.

“So I’ve heard,” Bixby replied. “You’re set for life, old man.”

Morse blinked. “I am?”

“A story like that? I doubt anyone will be topping that one anytime soon.”

Morse looked at the man as if he were half-mad, as if he had stepped out from some other world, even though Thursday recognized the tactic quite well: get the subject talking, get the wheels of the mind turning away from the disaster and on towards something else, on to the time when this day would be nothing but a good story. 

“Who would ever believe it?” Morse managed, his voice barely above a scratchy whisper.

“Why everyone. Truth is always stranger than fiction. Everyone knows that,” Bixby said, and then he tightened his grip on Morse’s shoulder and began to steer him away from the maze, back up to the house.

To Thursday’s surprise, Morse followed, for once in his life tractable, it seemed. Although, in his stunned state, he might have gone along with anyone.

He moved as if in he were in a dream, as if part of that big brain of his was drifting elsewhere, off into the clouds.

Or more likely, Thursday thought, right into the heart of the garden maze, imagining the white underbelly of a tiger leaping before him.

Thursday watched Morse go with some regret. But it was all right. This was not the place, anyhow. There’d be plenty of time to talk, to get things sorted, once this case was brought at last to a close. 

Thursday looked around, then, sharply. 

“Where’s Lady Georgina?” he asked. “We need to talk to her.”

“She’s not here,” Donn supplied, with a weary drawl, as if he was making a pointed statement of sorts, to someone, god-only-knew who.... but Thursday had no time for veiled meanings.

Nor the patience.

“Well, where is she?” Thursday asked. 

“I don’t know,” Belborough said. “But wherever she went, she took my car to get there.”

Lady Belborough’s arms slipped away from her husband’s broad shoulders at once, like two ribbons coming undone in the wind, and she stepped away from him. She and Donn both fell into a stony silence, then, as if a stolen car was the least that Belborough deserved. There was some story there, that much was certain. Whether or not it had any bearing on the case remained to be seen. 

Thursday rounded on Guy Crevecoeur, then, who was standing apart with Craven, each holding rifles of their own.

“Perhaps we might talk in your study," he said. 

“Of course, Inspector,” Crevecoeur said. 

Thursday exchanged pointed glances with Jakes and Mr. Bright—they were in it for the long haul now.

Who knew how many layers they’d have to dig through to get to the truth of it all?

The Lake Silence crowd kept their secrets close—could be as obtuse, when they wanted to be, as the depths of the dark lake that lay at their door. 

****

Morse sat on an ottoman, his face strangely blank, as if he were watching a movie-reel.

Well. That wasn’t the way. It was just as Thursday feared; now that the initial shock had worn off, Morse was replaying the scene over and over in his mind, as if in an endless loop. 

Guy Crevecoeur, in the meanwhile, looked, too, as if the room had gone strangely airless, as Thursday filled him in on the musk, the handkerchiefs, the red wool . . .

The tiger. 

“Your sister discovered that not only was the animal that attacked her alive, but that Dr. Lorenz was using it as part of his research,” Thursday said. “It looks as if it was your sister who stole the tigress musk and dosed Dr. Lorenz’s handkerchiefs with it, in the hope it would bring the animal to him. Only Ingrid Hjort borrowed one. And so it lured the tiger to her as she left the party at Maplewick Hall.”

“There’s no chance this is all some ghastly mistake?” Guy Crevecoeur asked. “What would make you think that Georgie put it there?”

“The handkerchiefs leading back to Crevecoeur Hall are all tied with red wool. The same red wool I saw her with when we first came here.”

“Man-eater,” Morse murmured. 

The room fell silent as they all turned to look at him—Crevecoeur, Donn, Bixby, the Belboroughs, Mr. Bright and Jakes—surprised that he had spoken.

“What’s that?” Thursday asked. “Morse?”

Morse’s eyes trailed about the room until they found his.

“He said, ‘man-eater.’ Lorenz. Just before he died. I think, in extremis, he reverted to his native tongue. It wasn’t man-eater, he said. It was _manita.”_

“What?” Guy Crevecoeur asked. “What's this?”

Morse turned back round, back to face Crevecoeur, and when he spoke, his voice was suddenly steady, familiar again, that low and mournful rolling with just a trace of the north. 

“I think, as Dr. Lorenz was dying, . . . . that he thought I was you. I was on the grounds, after all, not far from the house. He was trying to tell you who was behind his death. He must have known, known it was George who had taken the musk. Lorenz grabbed a hold of my shirt. But he wasn’t saying man-eater, like I thought, but rather _manita_. From _hermanita_. Little sister. Your little sister.”

Thursday’s narrowed eyes swung between the two of them, Morse and Crevecoeur —they hardly looked exactly alike, it was true, but they did have roughly the same thin faces, the same wavy and unkempt auburn-gold hair.

Dr. DeBryn had confirmed from the body’s core temperature that it was possible that Lorenz might have been clinging to a last whisper of life when Morse had found him.

Might Lorenz, as he lay dying, imagined that who he saw was who he had expected to see?

Lorenz didn’t know Morse at all, to Thursday’s knowledge, and Morse, really, had no reason to be on the grounds of Crevecoeur Hall— would not have been there at all if he hadn’t been running blindly through the woods, flying high on a double dose of hallucinogens—on whatever Emma Carr had added to Nick Wilding’s already spiked wine.

It seemed entirely plausible that a weak and fading Lorenz might think Morse was Guy Crevecoeur—it was his land, after all.

“You sure about that, Morse?” Jakes asked. “I thought it was I who said ‘man-eater’ that night. You sure I didn't put that idea into your head?”

Thursday frowned thoughtfully, remembering that frenzied night in the woods. It was true, what Jakes said. He had been the one to bring up that particular word.

A flash of annoyance twitched across Morse’s face, then, at being called into question by Jakes. 

“He said _manita,_ ” Morse insisted, each word as clear as a bell. 

Jakes looked to Thursday then and shrugged, as if deciding Morse’s word was good enough for him, after all. 

“It can’t be true. It _can’t_ be,” Crevecoeur protested. “Why would she do such a thing? Lorenz has been like part of the family for years. And she didn't even know this Ingrid Hjort.”

Thursday was about to tell him of the talk he and Jakes had had with Ingrid’s classmates—how they had told them of the former au pair who had seen Lorenz and Ingrid together and who had threatened to write to Ingrid’s parents about their affair. Thursday was certain that if they put Lady Georgina in a line-up, those two young women would identify her as the au pair in question.

But, before he could open his mouth to speak, Morse once again gave answer. 

“Because she was in love with him,” he said simply. “I can’t say what passed between them, but the key point was her affections went unrequited.”

He sighed and bent his head, revealing a mess of untidy waves at the crown. 

“Because George wanted to love s _omeone._ Or . . . she wanted someone to love her, I suppose,” he murmured again, his eyes trained on some point on the Persian carpet. 

It was proof positive that Morse was still as sharp as a tack. Because Morse was right there, wasn’t he? Not quite the same thing, were they?

“I think .... Since James . . .” Morse began, “I think she . . .”

Thursday scowled. _James?_ How many people, were there, exactly, involved in this?

“Wait,” Thursday interrupted, “Hang on. Who’s this?”

But Jakes seemed to follow Morse’s line of thought easily. 

“Was that her husband’s name? Lady Georgina’s?” Jakes asked. 

“Yes,” Morse said. 

“Pagan!” Kay Belborough hissed. “How could you? How could you tell them all of that?”

But Morse kept his eyes trained on Jakes, saying nothing.

How did Jakes know about any husband of Lady Georgina’s? When had Morse and Jakes had this conversation?

And of course, it must have been the night that Jakes brought Morse home to the lake house. 

Thursday realized that he just . . .

. . . . He just never imagined that they might actually have _spoken_ to one another. 

Guy Crevecoeur flinched and picked up a glass that had been left on the corner of his desk, finishing it off to the dregs as Morse once more began to speak. 

“Georgina’s husband died years ago in a boating accident,” Morse said. “On their honeymoon. She .... she felt like she was cursed, Georgina. I think . . . I think she was trying to tell me, even then.”

“Tell you _what?”_ Thursday asked, carefully. 

Morse swallowed, but when his eyes met his, his voice was steady enough.

“She told me that she was bad blood. That she was damaged, through and through.”

Thursday couldn’t help but grimace.

That, it seemed, was pretty rough stuff. 

And then, Thursday’s mind lit on the one telling word. 

_Damaged._

Lady Georgina had lost love once, in a manner that must have seemed beyond cruel.

Perhaps she had been rejected again because she was scarred, damaged, not only emotionally, but physically, as well—marked by a tiger’s merciless claws? 

It all fit. Thursday had seen such cases before: it was not uncommon for a killer whose aim was revenge to devise some elaborate means or another in which the punishment they dealt might fit the crime they believed had been perpetrated against them.

One form of mauling in exchange for another?

Or, perhaps she did not mean to kill? Her horror at the news of Lorenz’s death suggested as much.

Perhaps she thought, once Lorenz, too, was forced to look down a tiger, he would better understand her? That the shared experience might bring them together?

Whatever her deranged reasoning, the young woman was obviously a danger to herself and others.

Who could say what she might do next? 

The others looked from one to the other, their faces unreadable, as if the Lake Silence ranks were fast closing in on themselves, as if they were determined to protect one of their own.

There was a small part of him that could almost sympathize.

He might almost be tempted to feel quite sorry for her himself.

If her actions had not led to the violent deaths of three people.

Morse began to rise from the ottoman, but then his legs seemed to buckle slightly, and he landed back down with a soft swoosh. In his big eyes, Thursday could almost see that reel turning, replaying the film of the tiger leaping before him. 

Thursday felt torn, in more ways than one: he wanted to talk to Morse, but, for now, he had the case to consider.

And for now, the only thing he wanted more than to talk to Morse was to get him the hell out of here for a while. He chanced a glance at Mr. Bright as if to check for his approval, and, as much as the chief superintendent was known to be a stickler for protocol, Thursday could tell he was thinking much the same thing. But what to do with the lad?

“Perhaps, I might take Morse back, Inspector.”

Thursday looked up, then, to see that Joss Bixby was watching Morse thoughtfully; one look at the man’s face and he could tell that he had come to the same assessment Thursday had.

“We're neighbors, after all,” Bixby explained. “He’s right next door, so he can get what he needs, and then he can stay at my place . . . until he . . .”

He let the sentence drift off, as if he didn’t quite know how to phrase it, but Thursday finished an approximation of it for him, all the same, in his head.

... until he looked a little less as if he had just been attacked by a tiger? 

Bixby, Thursday knew, was a relative newcomer on the Lake Silence scene. In a preliminary inquiry, he would be just the sort of outsider that Thursday would like to speak with the most, to get a more objective view of things. But now that they had the _who_ and the _how_ , it was the _why_ —the motivation—they needed locked down to seal the case, as well as any information as to where Lady Georgina might have gone—the sort of information that Bixby would hardly be privy to.

Bruce Belborough, it seemed might have the better idea as to why she might have done a runner right when it seemed she had repented of what she had done, right when it seemed she was trying to lure the tiger back. And any of them—her brother, her old school friends—might be able to give them some idea as to where to begin to look for her. 

“All right,” Thursday said. “Thank you.”

He looked, then, to Morse. 

“Morse,” Thursday said. 

Morse continued to stare straight before him, but then he looked up, inquiringly. It was as if he had left some part of his brain on sentry duty, to stand guard as the bulk of his thoughts dwelt elsewhere, and there had been some internal delay in relaying his message. 

“You’re free to go. You can go back with Bixby. But I want you to stay put, understand? There’s a few things we need to clear up.”

“Sir?” Morse asked. 

“About the case,” Thursday said. 

That was the simplest explanation, even though it was hardly true. There were a hundred things, he realized, he needed to say to Morse—a hundred things he found he wished he would have told him as he watched the powerful Bengal leap before him—and not one of them was about the case. 

“Mmmmm,” Morse said. 

“So. You can go over to yours to change. And then you’ll stay at Bixby’s till I come round.”

“Mmmmm.”

“All right? Morse?”

“Yes,” Morse said, at last. “Yes. All right.”

Morse rose and made his way over to the door, as if grateful to get the hell out of the place, and Bixby followed.

As Bixby turned to go, Lady Belborough looked up, watching his retreating figure as if she might turn him into a tree or into a stone—anything if she might freeze him into place. Bixby seemed to feel her gaze on his back and turned to look over his shoulder as he stood on the threshold, but, as he did so, Lady Belborough cast her gaze away and took her husband’s hand.

Joss Bixby smiled then, a smile that did not quite reach his eyes, and then he left the room. 

Well.

Another one for the books, perhaps.

Who knew what layers and layers of heartbreak and deception they had woven for themselves out here in this little hothouse?

Well. It was September now. 

Perhaps it was high time they called off the party.

***

Morse walked out of Crevecoeur Hall, out into the bright sun of mid-day, into a warm and welcoming light that made the shadows short at his feet and threw all into bright relief.

As he approached Bixby’s canary yellow custom Jag, he began to circle around the passenger side, when suddenly, he startled, as Bixby threw him the keys.

Morse snatched them up in the palm of his right hand and then he looked at him, perplexed.

“Why don’t you drive, old man? Steady the nerves.”

“Are you sure?” Morse asked. 

“Of course. Best thing for you. Get your mind off things.”

Morse eyed the car dubiously.

“I dunno. Might be a bit much for me.”

Bixby laughed, as if he had been paid the highest of compliments, and slid into the passenger’s seat.

“I think I can trust you with her, old man. I don’t generally allow anyone else to drive her, it’s true, but I think today I can make a special exception. This entire day is a special exception, in fact, one might say.”

Morse shuddered at the allusion to the tiger attack and then opened the door and settled himself behind the wheel, starting up the ignition with a satisfying crank of the key, bringing the engine rumbling to life. 

They started off down the drive, and it felt good, actually, the wind on his face, as they trundled along. The solid and easy feel of the wheel beneath his hand, the clarity of purpose as the ribbon of a road lay out before him, was as soothing and as steadying as the idea that each revolution of the tires was carrying him further and further away from that moment in the maze. . . from the moment when he had thought . . . now it will all be over . . . and I’ll never get the chance to ....

But then they came to the turn onto the main road, and his concentration was once more diverted, brought into the present, as the wind ruffled at his hair and the road wound its way forwards in gently swaying sun-dappled patches, under arches formed by rustling green leaves, before him. 

They had scarcely gone a mile, however, when Morse began to wonder if Bixby didn’t have a more pragmatic, pointed purpose in mind, when he had offered to take him back to their part of the neighborhood. 

“You seem to know Inspector Thursday quite well,” Bixby said.

Morse frowned. Bixby did a good job, he had to admit, of tossing the words out as if they hardly mattered, as if it were simply a casual observation, but Morse sensed the undercurrent of definite interest there, all the same.

He paused for a moment, taking this in. Of what interest to Bixby was his relationship with Thursday?

Did the sudden police presence in Lake Silence give him _particular_ cause to worry? 

“Yes,” Morse said cautiously. 

“How is that, might I ask? Was he involved in whatever that spot of trouble was you had before?”

“Who told you that?” Morse snapped. 

“Tony mentioned. He didn’t say much. He was discreet.”

Morse scowled over the top of the steering wheel as he took another curve. Why should Tony have said anything about it at all?

And how could he ever explain it? 

“I wasn’t in _trouble._ Not exactly. Well, I was. But it was a frame-up. Because I was . . . because Inspector Thursday used to be my governor.”

Morse stole a glance over and caught a glimpse of Bixby’s face, the smooth brow furrowed into lines of perplexity as he tried to puzzle out Morse’s meaning. 

And so Morse made it all the clearer. 

“I was a policeman,” he said. 

Morse never would have thought it possible for such a look to cross Bixby’s face—it was as if he had been hit with the one thing he never saw coming. For a moment, Bixby remained much as he was, looking through the windscreen before him, and then he laughed, a long and rich laugh, as if the universe had played some sort of joke on him, one that Morse didn’t quite grasp. 

“Why is that funny?” Morse asked, annoyed.

Surely, he wasn’t that far gone? Was it so unbelievable that he had once held a job? Had responsibilities? That he had once been one of Oxford’s finest? 

Bixby scrubbed a hand over his face, then pulled thoughtfully at his chin, his quirk of a smile still in place.

“Never mind, old man. Never mind.”

Morse turned the wheel, took a wide curve, and then looked over at him, appraisingly, as if turnabout was fair play.

“So,” he said. “What’s the truth of you? Sportsman? Tycoon? Gambler? Who’s the real Joss Bixby?” 

“Ah,” he said. “I wish I knew, old man. I wish I knew.”

Morse said nothing; this, at least, he supposed, was an honest answer. And it was the only one that he expected Bixby to provide, truth be told, so he was surprised when he spoke anew.

“A fraud, I suppose. But you, of course, knew that all along.”

Morse twisted his mouth into a thoughtful frown. What was this, then? Some attempt at flattery? Some attempt to soften him, some plea for sympathy?

“But then again,” Bixby added, laughing. “Even Belborough worked out that much. Who would have thought it?”

Morse glanced over to where Bixby was riding along beside him, clearly enjoying himself and the beauty of the day—the feel of the summer air and the play of light pattering through the trees, as sparkling as the roving spotlights that illuminated one of his parties—with all the self-satisfaction of a peacock preening on a high fence.

He might very well be a fraud, but, paradoxically, there was nothing false there—not in the open expression, nor in the quirk of a smile that played about the full mouth.

If anything, Morse envied him his certainty of purpose. 

He was a born showman, and as such, he played his part well. The mask became him, even, was a part of his not inconsiderable charm. He wore it with an innocence that was almost paradoxical . . . and frightening, too, considering some of the company he seemed to keep.

He might well be fraud. But at least that was _something._

But what was Morse, really? 

Failed son, failed student, failed fiancé, failed signalman, failed police officer. 

He was using up worlds faster than he could find new ones, taking up one mask and then another and then another and casting each of them aside. 

But why should he go back?

_“They’ll take everything you hold dear,”_ Val Todd had said. 

Morse had curled his lip in derision at the time.

It was difficult—painful, even—to remember that he had once been so naive.

But not anymore.

And so he hadn’t even said good-bye to Monica, hadn’t the courage even to leave a note at her door. 

He hadn’t dared.

How could he when the only vision that swam before his eyes when he thought of her, of her soft face, her soft smile—was an image some crony sent out by the Masons, skulking behind their building, cutting the brake lines of her small, blue moped?

Jakes, after all, had been right to crumple in the face of it. Jakes knew all about it, had been confronting it for years and years, while, he Morse, had spun about in a dreamworld of marble and silence and old paper. Jakes had been right about him all along—misfit, college boy—living with his head in the clouds, a far, far, cry from the reality Jakes knew in the twilight hours, in the cold light of dawn.

You could get some of them, sure. But there were always others. And there would always be some that danced and capered, taunting you, just beyond your reach. 

Morse had been jousting at windmills, while all the while, Jakes knew that the deepest evil lies somewhere untouched and unseen.

And it never sleeps, it never, ever sleeps, and he hadn’t slept for so long.

The deer flashed in a brilliant blur of russet fur, bright as the sun, leaping onto the road before him. It was a giant stag with antlers held aloft, its blank, black eye the very picture of innocence dilated with fear, growing nearer and ever nearer as the canary yellow Jag approached, as Morse slammed on the brakes, as the tires shrieked in protest, and as his forehead hit the steering wheel in a shatter of pain.

And then the world went black. 

****

In prison, Morse had come to hate the darkness.

The night guards had been the most vindictive, the most spiteful; forced to live their lives out of sync with the rest of the world, they felt the chaffing of isolation and confinement as strongly as those whom they guarded. They did not care what happened, really. As long as the inmates were making one another miserable, they were satisfied enough.

Schadenfreude. The weakest of all solaces.

Morse sat utterly still in the darkness, almost holding his breath; if he was quiet enough, perhaps they might forget all about him. Perhaps he might make it through one more night here, after all, and in the morning, Jakes would come, or Strange, with news of Thursday.

Or perhaps he might be called at last into the visiting room, and Thursday himself would be there, miraculously well and whole.

“It was just a graze,” he say, in his old voice, strong and gravelly. “We’re working to get you out,” he would say, and Morse would nod, stoically, repressing a sob of relief.

All this might come, but for now, there was only a blinding pain in the darkness, a trickle of blood running thick and warm down his forehead, and then a hand on his shoulder—but not to pull him upright, to force his face up for another blow, but rather to steady, to comfort.

And then there was a voice, warm as a whisper in a summer night, strangely familiar.

“You all right, old man?”

Morse pulled himself up, away from the wheel, out of the blackness, until he rested his head back, and the world before his eyelids changed from dark to light. The first thing he became aware of was that something warm, something wet, was trickling down his face. And then there was a feeling of light pressure against his forehead. And a voice, rich and plummy and full of carefully-crafted control. 

“Morse?”

Morse opened his eyes.

Bixby’s face swam before his clouded vision. He was leaning over him, holding something against his forehead, something Morse could make out at the edge of his consciousness as a white handkerchief. Just like one of the white handkerchiefs that hung in the trees, baiting death, and Morse tried to pull away, but Bixby lay a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Easy. It’s not so bad. Although you’ll have a hell of a bruise there I suspect.”

Morse blinked, trying to piece it together. 

He had been knocked out. 

He had hit his head on the steering wheel. 

He had hit the brakes because . . . . 

Why?

Because there was the deer . . . and . . . 

My god.

There was no escaping it, was there? 

In one intake of breath, the new and mirror-bright clarity that had been gathering at the edges of his mind shattered, snapped out like a light. 

No. 

It had drawn itself up, rather, shining though him with a blaze of fiery revelation—a revelation of the one thing he had been avoiding knowing about himself, of the one truth from which he’d been hiding.

He was the tiger.

He had been the tiger all along. 

They were all the tiger, all of them, weren’t they?

Each of them was the predator.

And each of them was the prey. 

In a game that went on and on in a wheel of no escape . . .

He could hide away here in the woods, break himself down in any number of attempts to render himself harmless, invisible, but yet . . . it had happened ... he had torn through the trees with a mechanized violence, torn right though the very heart of innocence, as the stag, leaping before him like a symbol in a stained-glass window, its antlers glinting in the sun, crossed before his careless path. 

Morse buried his face in his hands, overcome with an exhaustion falling fast into a bleak despair, and then someone was sobbing, and he was the predator and the prey and there was no escaping the round of it. 

“Stop that,” Bixby said. 

If only it were that simple. There was no way to stop it, was there? He had tried and tried, and all was in vain. There was no neutral position. He was the predator and he was the . . . 

“You’re all right, Morse. Just stop that.”

And then, Morse realized that the person sobbing was him. 

But why shouldn’t he? What other atonement did he have? And he had eyed Tony warily as he stepped away from Bluebell, one headlight blanked out. 

_“Bloody pheasant,”_ _Tony said. “Thought I missed it.”_

And the bitter curl of disappointment Morse had felt, deep in his gut, while all the while he himself was just the same, just the same. Careless and cruel and . . . They were careless, Bruce and Kay and Georgina... they smashed up cars and people and plowed right on . . and so, it transpired, did he. . . 

“Morse,” Bixby said. “Just stop that now.”

And why was he so set on it? What the hell did it matter? 

“Why?” Morse managed, at last, the word broken and cracked even before it fell from his mouth. 

“I . . . ”

And here, Bixby hesitated.

“I don’t want you to hate me later.”

Morse sobbed anew at that. Because it was true, wasn’t it? And he and Jakes had circled around one another all summer ... and which was the tiger? Which was the deer? It felt that they both had played each role by turns. 

And what sort of world was it, anyway, in which it was a fate worse than death to show even a scrap of weakness before another?

“I killed it,” Morse said, thickly. “I killed it.” 

“He was fine, old man. You’d slowed. You’re just overwrought by the day, is all.”

“I hit it.”

“Well,” Bixby admitted. “Yes. But I think it did more damage to you, truth be told. One roll and he sprang right up again. Ran right into the woods.”

It was a lie, of course. Like everything he said. A comforting lie, but a lie all the same. 

Bixby seemed to read his thoughts. 

“Just look for yourself, old man. Do you see a carcass?”

Slowly, Morse lowered his hands. 

The road before him was empty, mere pavement, the grass on either side undisturbed. 

Then, Morse’s eyes trailed over the front of the car, where a dent glinted in the sun, right over the headlamp. 

And . . .

That was even worse, wasn’t it? 

The poor creature must have managed to make it into the woods, but how could it be alright, after that? How could it ever be the same? It wouldn’t be, it wouldn’t be the same. It was slowly dying, even though it might not know it. It might wander off, make its solitary way though miles of dark and lonely firs, until at last it collapsed, succumbing to its internal injuries, bleeding out and confused and . . .

Morse buried his face in his hands to stifle the sounds burbling up from his throat, choking him, and it was a stupid thing to do, really; he might cover his eyes, but it was still there, the world, he may look away from what had happened, but it had all still happened just the same, there was no taking some things back . . . . and he was the predator and he was the prey and he had been . . . 

“Move over,” said a voice, then—one that was suddenly too close, one that was suddenly standing over right him.

Morse took a shuddering gulp of air that tasted of salt and lowered his hands. 

Somehow, when he had not been paying attention, Bixby had gotten out of the car, had come around to the driver’s side door.

“Go on, then” he said, in a tone appropriate to a five-year-old. “Move over now.” 

Morse furrowed his brow, confused, and he was fine, he was fine and. . . why should Bixby be looking at him so?

“You just faced down a tiger,” Bixby said. “I’m not judging you. I just don’t want you to drive my car right now. I’m rather fond of it. Now move over.”

Slowly, the message seemed to permeate, some synapse that was still firing off in response to the outside world managed to relay the message, and Morse clambered over the gear shift with ill-grace and settled into the passenger’s seat. Then he turned his face away, looking out over the door. 

“Honestly, it ran off. I’m sure it’s fine, old man,” Bixby said, resetting the emergency break. 

Morse turned back and frowned, watching his hand.

Bixby must have thrown it then, before the crash? After? Morse had no memory of doing such a thing... 

“Just . . .” Morse began then, as the engine came growling to life.

“Just what?”

“Just don’t go too fast.” 

Bixby sighed, put the car into drive, and proceeded off at the rate of ten miles an hour. 

“This all right?”

For a moment, Morse said nothing, mulling it over. 

“Yes,” he said.

Even though it wasn’t. 

It wasn’t all right. 

It would never be all right.

And there was nothing all the policemen in the world could do about it.

No.

There was nothing _he_ could do about it.

****

Bixby’s great stone house was usually an assault to the senses, overblown and overdone, the grand project of some Victorian robber baron or another—but today it was a welcome sight, for the promise of what it harbored within. 

“I need a drink,” Morse said, surprised himself by how much his voice shook as he said the words.

“You know, old man,” Bixby said blithely, just as if Morse had not spoken. “I haven’t used the pool all summer. I shouldn’t have bothered having it put in, I suppose, seeing as the water never quite warms here. But I was just thinking—it’s now or never, I suppose. Do you know how to swim?”

Bixby, Morse knew, was talking to distract him, not knowing it was having quite the opposite effect.

His brain was going in circles again, hashing and rehashing Bixby’s words. If he was from Oxford, shouldn’t he have been aware of the simple norms of the climate?

It all rang false, just as false as the man’s accent, posh and practiced—too practiced—all the “old mans” and _“Where did you pick that up, anyway?”_ Bruce asked.

But Bixby seemed completely unconcerned by Morse’s rather dour silence. He swung his long legs out of the car and sailed off . . . . and then, once he realized that Morse had remained where he was, he turned and smiled encouragingly, until Morse felt he had no choice but to follow.

“I’m getting a bit old for this, seeing in the dawn,” Bixby said, even though, truth was, it was past noon. “This ought to be just the thing.”

He led him through the gardens and out onto the patio by the pool, which lay cool and undisturbed beneath a glittering sun. Morse had to admit that it had its appeal. How many times had he gone out of the door of the lake house, submerged himself beneath the dark surface of Lake Silence, so that he might block it all out, for just one blessed moment? To still the whirl of noise and confusion, shutting out all save of course that which sounded within his own head?

Bixby walked up to the edge of the deep end, and then, with little ceremony, he peeled himself out of the jacket of his evening suit and tossed it onto a lounge chair before setting to work on his shirt buttons. Once he had them undone, he pulled his arms free, revealing naught but a white vest and shoulders more powerful than Morse would have believed lay beneath the elegant and perfectly tailored suits, leaving Morse to feel self-conscious of his own narrower, more compact frame. 

Bixby stripped off his vest, too, then, tossing it aside onto the chair, and then he looked up to Morse, as if to question why he was not following suit.

“Come on, then. It’ll be just the thing,” he said.

Morse crossed his arms to hide his self-consciousness, tried to behave as if it was the most natural thing in the world that someone should disrobe before him, and asked, “Are you sure it’s safe? You going in a pool? Isn’t that how the story ends?”

But Bixby only laughed; whether he got the allusion, or just thought Morse was being cryptic, Morse wasn’t sure. Bix simply went on to toe off his shoes with the same easy grace, and it was only when his hands were on the buckle of his trousers that Morse pulled at his undone tie, so that it slithered from around his neck like a silken snake, and laid it over the back of the chair.

Bixby stepped out of his trousers, then, and straightened, stretching as he did so like a cat in the sun, supremely unconcerned that he stood before Morse in nothing but a pair of perfectly prosaic plaid underpants.

But of course, the man was an exhibitionist, was most likely reveling in Morse’s discomfiture.

He dove in, headfirst, in one easy line, with an athleticism of a man younger than his years—he was of an age as Bruce, but, unlike Bruce, had not yet begun to go soft.

And again, Morse found himself scrutinizing this, working out the chinks in Bixby’s story. He had the build of one far more accustomed to physical labor than one might expect from someone who wore such elegantly-tailored suits, from someone with such well-manicured hands.

He was, just as he said, most likely, a fraud.

So. Who was the real Joss Bixby?

Not Joss Bixby at all, most likely.

But then, it wasn’t as if Morse was terribly forthcoming about his own name, either.

Bixby popped up at the edge of the pool, then, the flash of a white smile triumphant.

“It’s cold, but bracing. You really should give it a go,” he said. “Clear your head.” And then he pushed off from the side in a playful splash.

Morse highly doubted he could dive in as gracefully as Bixby could, so to avoid further embarrassment, he waited until Bixby was under the water, shooting out into the shallow end in a steady surge like a rocket, before undressing and leaping in, plunging into the cold with a shock that was almost painful, but welcome, blocking out all else.

As soon as he plunged beneath the water, it was as if each of his nerves had been redirected, pulled out of their spiral and sent signing to attention. The cold sent his limbs tingling even as it stilled the sparks and circles of the synapses of his mind; under the water, the world was muted, hushed into a ringing thrill of iciness . . . past touch, past sight, past sound . . . 

Then, the feeling of new life that surged through him began to drain, to fade, as a new pressure in his chest blossomed and intensified, until he broke up to the surface of the water in a rush, inhaling a deep breath of air in a gasp, opening his eyes to the sunlit world . . .

. . . And, as he did so, he found that Bixby’s face was there, a mere few inches before his.

Whether Bixby had surfaced at the same place by accident or by design, Morse wasn’t sure.

But like this, face to face under the sun, Morse noticed for the first time that there were shades of amber in Bixby’s dark eyes, as warm as the rich wood of a violin left on a sun-dappled window seat.

Then, in one flailing swoop, he realized there was something else there in the brown eyes as well, something besides the warmth of the sun, even though it had taken Morse a few moments to recognize it for what it was.

Intent.

Intent, pure and simple, and even as the fact registered, Bixby’s face was moving closer, until he was bringing one broad hand out of the water and placing it at Morse’s nape, drawing him in, pressing his mouth to his in a slow slide of a kiss.

And, once again, the circles stopped, as Morse was lost to the warmth flooding his mouth, to the buoyant feel of a steadying hand at the back of his skull, brushing through his hair and angling his face so as to deepen the kiss.

It should have all been a shock just as strong as the cold of the water, but if Morse felt like being honest with himself, he had seen it coming all along, since the very beginning, since that first party, on the night the stranger’s eyes had trailed after him and Kay on the dance floor.

Bixby’s eyes had wandered between Kay and him, and . . . and what was Morse doing? The man within whose encircling arm he rested must possibly be the most confused person in all of Lake Silence, far more so than him, than Kay, than even poor Georgina....

The man was a shadow, just as much so as the noonday shadow that had puddled before him as he had made his way from Crevecoeur Hall. He was a shadow who must always need someone, someone else, no matter who—to fill that void, to make him real.

Morse began to turn away, but Bixby’s mouth followed, tracing kisses along the lines of his throat, speaking words between the kisses that vibrated through his skin. It was as if Bixby thought he understood his hesitation, and was trying to assuage it.

“You’re supposed to be clever,” he murmured. “It was for you, that last party. Didn’t you know? It was all for you.”

But Morse didn’t soften. He wasn’t questioning the sincerity of Bixby’s design, but rather the wisdom of it.

If Bixby needed someone to add substance to his shadow, he was certainly scraping the bottom of the barrel if he had sunken down to him. Morse was hardly the person for his pedestal. He hadn’t envied Kay her position when she had tottered there, and he certainly didn’t want to stand there now. He had enough problems to be going on with.

Kay hadn’t been able to lie, in the end, even when she wanted to, even when she had been deluding herself all along.

How much less might he, Morse, be suited to such games?

“I can’t say it,” Morse said.

Bixby at last pulled his face away, although the hand at his nape remained where it was, carding through the sodden waves of his hair, sending Morse’s nerves humming despite himself.

“Say what?” Bixby asked, a faint line of confusion between his brows.

_“It’s all right, Kay. Just tell him the truth. Just tell him what you told me—that you never loved him—and it will all be over,” Bixby said._

“I can’t say everything you want me to say,” Morse said.

“I know that. Forgive me, old man. But I hardly think you’re known for being a particularly conciliatory person.”

Then Bixby smiled, a smile full of fondness, full of the warmth of the bright violin on the window seat.

“I was sort of counting on that, actually,” he said, his hand once more drawing him in, pulling him in like a moon, closer and closer into his orbit.

And then Bixby pressed his mouth back against the side of his throat, brushing his lips back and forth between kisses so that the burn of the stubble of his face sent him shivering.

“But you won’t lie to me either,” he murmured.

That was certainly true enough, Morse could admit to that . . . and he put a steadying hand on Bixby’s sun-warmed shoulder and tilted his head so that their mouths collided once more, and … and what the hell was he doing?

He had gotten into the car and headed off to his next disaster, he was a leaf fallen in the stream, jumping about in the current, a passive observer in the catastrophe of his own life .... but he had always been that, hadn’t he? It was only in the past few months that he had come around to admitting it.

Agency was an illusion, after all.

And the deer had leapt out, and fate . . . no, not fate. . . his own carelessness . . . and his breath hitched at the memory of it . . . and he was the predator and he was the . . .

But then Bixby’s hand trailed from his nape, stroking soft as sunlight down the length of his back, until he suddenly moved to cup his arse. As he did so, he pulled him up through the water in a rush, so that Morse floundered for a moment before straddling him to anchor himself.

As Morse’s legs locked behind him at the ankles, Bixby thrust his hips forward, so that Morse felt the sudden press of hardness against his own, and a jolt surged through him like a pulse of desire, and all the circles stopped as Bixby bent his head and pressed his mouth once more to the side of his throat, so that Morse was looking half-blindly up at the clouds above . . . as they drifted and turned and morphed into something else . . .

And then reality hit, as cold as that first icy plunge into the water and. . . .

Anyone could come out here . . . a servant, a partygoer returned for a forgotten handbag . . .

Morse broke away, insinuating himself out of Bixby’s grasp with no warning and with very little grace, leaving Bixby to look once more beset with confusion.

“Sorry,” Morse said. “I just don’t want to go back to prison.”

Bixby’s eyes widened at that, clearly startled, not just at his sudden swerve from breathlessness to bitterness, but at the words themselves.

“What?” Morse snapped. “Tony didn’t tell you that, too?”

The question was largely unnecessary; by the look on Bixby’s face it was clear that he hadn’t.

Bixby struggled to maintain his composure, to look as if this new and unexpected information didn’t matter in the least.

But of course, it did. Of course, it had changed the way he thought about him. It always would, from here on out. 

“There’s no need to worry,” Bixby said. “We’re quite alone.”

“We’re all quite alone,” Morse said.

Bixby’s mouth twisted in displeasure at that.

“Are you always so gloomy? Besides, I don’t think you've been following the news. Parliament has passed that act. There’s nothing _illegal_ about this. Not at all. Quite the opposite, I’d say.”

He said the words matter-of-factly enough, but with a tinge of irritation, too, as if he thought him rather tasteless to bring such practicalities up in the midst of such a moment, as if Morse had reached out and popped his bubble of a dream world. 

And, in a way, he had… what had felt like the height of passion just a moment before now felt slightly ridiculous, as they tread water there, face to face, discussing politics.

“Well,” Bixby sighed, at last. “I suppose you’re right, old man. Lake Silence is no place for us right now, is it? What do you say we go to Paris, for the weekend? Try this out?”

“Try what out? Morse asked. 

“This,” he said.

“What _this?”_

Bixby looked at him as though he was being deliberately obtuse.

“This,” he said. And then he reached an arm behind him again, encircling his waist, pulling him forward .... and already the awkwardness that had fallen between them was sliding away, falling off somewhere sideways as the rest of the world evaporated around them .... as Bixby’s mouth sought his for another kiss. Pressed together thus, their legs bumped in an uncomfortable tangle, so Morse swung his up again, rocking subtly as he pressed himself up against him. Bixby moaned into his mouth and then slipped his hand lower, cupping his arse as if to urge him on, even as he trailed another row kisses up the line of his throat, brushing against his skin with a delicious shiver of stubble.

“So, what do you say. Come to Paris with me? For the weekend?” he said, his breath a heavy and warm hush by his ear. 

“But . . . . ” Morse began. 

“We’ll be back Monday. And anyway, you’ve already told them all you know, haven’t you?” 

“But . . .”

But maybe this was it. Maybe this was what he had been waiting for. Perhaps this might finally be the day that he could manage it, when he would do what he hadn’t been able to before—to leave Lake Silence far, far behind him.

“But shouldn’t I at least go back to the lake house? So I can pack a few things?”

“You could borrow some of mine.”

“But . . . ”

“I don’t want you to go back to the lake house,” Bixby said.

“Why?”

“Because,” Bixby said. “If you go back to the lake house, you’ll start thinking. And then you’ll change your mind.”

****

Thursday stood under the dark canopy of trees, just a few feet from the main road, as Dr. DeBryn knelt over the body of Jeanne Hearne.

He and Jakes had just gotten the call in on the radio, right as they were leaving Crevecoeur Hall; another death, it seemed, had been uncovered in the woods around Lake Silence.

They had thought perhaps that the tiger had struck one final blow before it happened upon Morse and Lady Belborough in the maze, before it met the end of Mr. Bright’s gun, but Thursday needed only one look at the body to know that it was not the Bengal that had brought about the young woman’s death.

“Struck by a car,” DeBryn said, affirming Thursday’s best guess.

“They’ve got uniform going from house to house, checking on any cars in the area for damage,” Strange reported. “There was a party at Bixby’s just last night. Woods full of drunks, I s’pose.”

“I don’t think this young woman was killed last night,” Dr. DeBryn said.

“How long then?” Thursday asked.

“Two or three hours,” Dr. DeBryn said.

Thursday met Jakes’ eyes at once.

Lady Georgina, perhaps, in her desperate flight, had hit the young woman, a straggler, perhaps, wandering home from the party the night before?

Just then, a young PC approached him.

“Sir,” he said. “A bulletin came in, on the radio. I took the liberty of transcribing it for you, as you were . . .” 

He, hesitated, stealing one nervous glance at the body . . . “engaged.”

“Thank you, constable,” Thursday said, taking the paper. The constable turned on his heel at once, then, as if keen to put as much distance as he could between them, and Thursday furrowed his brow.

Surely, he wasn't _so_ intimidating?

Thursday took the paper and began to read, and, as soon as he saw the opening words, he felt his heart sink. 

Joss Bixby’s yellow Jag, it seemed, had been found right in front of his grand pile of a house, the engine still warm and a large dent in the front right fender. 

According to the servants, Bixby had left just an hour or so previously, in another car, with a friend, ostensibly for a weekend in Paris.

But, now, it seemed, they were fleeing the country quite a different reason.

Thursday lowered the paper, clenched it tight in his hand, anger pulsing through his veins.

He didn’t have the heart to read the suspects’ descriptions.

He had met Joss Bixby before, after all.

And Endeavour Morse he would know anywhere.


	15. Flight

Thursday slammed the car door shut with a resounding bang nearly as loud as the one that had sounded earlier that day from the end of Mr. Bright’s gun.

“Did I or did I not expressly tell him to stay put?” Thursday snarled.

“You did, sir,” Jakes said.

“What in the _hell?_ What was he thinking? Why would have he gone off with that man? Even after he _killed_ a woman? My god.”

Thursday glared through the windscreen and into the high branches of the arching trees, as dark thought after darker swooped down to claim him, pecking at his brain like tattered-feathered birds of prey.

“That’s not Morse. Not the Morse I know,” he said. 

Jakes said nothing. 

And then, another thought struck him, sharper and more ominous than all the ones before, leaving him with a sickening twist deep in his gut. 

“You don’t suppose he went unwillingly, do you?” Thursday asked. “If Joss Bixby had killed this young woman . . . perhaps he thought to keep the police at bay by taking Morse as a hostage?”

His sergeant’s typically impassive face twitched for just an instant, and then he turned to look out of the window, as if there was something he was avoiding telling him.

“Sergeant?” Thursday prompted. 

“He was driving, sir,” Jakes said.

“What? What’s this?”

Jakes turned back round to face him.

“I said, ‘he was driving, sir.’ Morse.”

It took a long few moments for Thursday to fully register the words, as the blood that had been hammering hard in his ears drained away, running down out of his head, out of his chest, leaving nothing but a sense of hollowness and the ice of the metal bullet lodged next to his heart in its wake. And he’d never be free of it, that reminder.

“What?” was all that Thursday could manage.

Jakes heaved a rueful sigh. 

“When they were leaving Crevecoeur Hall, I saw them out the window. Bixby tossed Morse the keys. Morse was driving.”

Thursday never would have believed it. He never, ever would have believed it.

He had known that Morse was sinking, fading, but he never would have believed he might have emerged from prison the sort of man who would strike a young woman down on the road and then, what? Skip the country? Run off for a nice little trip to Paris? 

But what else to make of it all? Of the sudden appearance of a dent in the yellow Jag, a car that had travelled the route between the two houses not far from which Jeanne Hearne’s body was found? The impromptu flight to France?

According to a further report from uniform, the lake house looked as if it had gone untouched, as if Morse hadn’t even packed a bag. Even his shaving set and toothbrush were there, set on the shelf by that chipped white porcelain sink, a hell of a thing. 

Jakes shrugged; it was if he could read his thoughts.

“Prison changes a man,” he said.

Thursday felt a deeper ache there in the hollowness under his ribs on hearing the words. Because hadn’t Morse told him much the same thing?

_“I’m not the same.”_

But no. This was not at all the Morse he knew. The Morse he knew would never leave a woman for dead.

What was to blame for this? What could have happened to the lad to turn him thus, into someone so cold and careless that Thursday could scarcely recognize him?

Thursday turned away, and, as he did, he caught a glimpse of his own dark and hardened eyes in the rearview mirror, as if therein lay his answer. 

It all came down to him. And that night.

The night he should have ordered Morse home. 

All he could remember now of that night was Morse, standing before him in the darkened and empty rooms of Blenheim Vale, his eyes slightly unfocused, as slowly, he recited a poem, half to himself, half to him.

_How hopeless under ground falls the remorseful day._

How apropos, in retrospect. How prophetic.

Remorse.

It was remorse, and not the bullet, that so sent that ice through his veins.

Each man kills the things he loves.

The Morse he knew was an idealist. There were times when Thursday had felt as if he was almost like his own lost, mirror image, filling in all the things he had once hoped to be, but couldn’t quite pull off. 

And Thursday had loved him for it, almost as much as if he were a second son. 

And then he killed him.

Or the best of him, anyway.

****

“It won’t do, Thursday, it simply won’t do,” Mr. Bright said.

“Sir. I understand. But it might be my last chance. My only chance. If he’s shipped off to ...”

Thursday could hardly bear to finish the sentence. 

There _had_ to be some explanation. He had to believe that. He had to talk to the lad, see if it was true.

If Morse was shipped off to prison again, there would be nothing left of him by the time the case came to trial, Thursday was sure of it, felt it in his bones. Morse had been fading into a ghost of himself all summer, wandering around lost in woods that he had come to know like the back of his hand, but lost all the same.

But just that morning he had seen a hint of it, of the Morse he once knew, like a glimmer slowly gathering . . . and now, wherever Morse was, it must surely be . . . 

“He was your former bagman,” Mr. Bright said. “A friend, almost, of the family. You’re far too personally invested in this case, Thursday.”

“That’s just why it has to be me, sir. I’m not sure if he’ll talk to anyone else. Whom will he trust, after what happened before? I think he’ll at least talk to me. And it might very well be my last chance to talk to him. What’s left of him, anyway,” Thursday added bitterly.

Mr. Bright sat back in his oversized leather chair, regarding him for a moment that seemed to stretch on and on with the ticking of the old round clock on the wall. 

“You can’t blame yourself, Thursday,” he said at last, his reedy voice strained.

“Can’t I?” Thursday asked. 

Thursday had had ample time to send Morse away that night. Could have ordered him to go.

Truth of it was, he was tired. Tired, after years of working with Lott, of going it alone. Having Morse as his bagman was just like an echo of days he had spent in North Africa, days consumed by an unbearable bleakness, days when a vast sense of hopelessness stretched out as far as the sands of the deserts themselves, but in which at least you stood by a comrade, someone who could trust with your life, someone for whom you would lay down your life in return.

Until Morse had been sent over that day from Carshall Newton, Thursday had been more alone here, in his own crowded nick, than he had ever been under that endless North African sky.

Yes. He had had ample time to send him away, on the night of Blenheim Vale. 

_“No calvary coming.”_

But he hadn’t.

“I just.... Sir. I need to talk to him. I’m the only one who knows what happened that night. How it was. It has to be me.”

Just then, there was soft knock on the door.

“Yes?” Mr. Bright called.

Sergeant Strange opened the door just wide enough to just duck his head inside.

“They’ve got them. They’re here. They’re holding them downstairs.”

Thursday looked to Mr. Bright. It was already starting. What was Morse thinking, down there in the cells, locked up once more? And suddenly Thursday could feel it, was sure of it: If there was anything there, anything left of the Morse he knew, it was slowly dying out, like the sun on that long-ago desert horizon. 

Mr. Bright must have read his thoughts in his eyes, because he sat for another long moment, toying with a pen in his hands, before he said, “Very well, Thursday. Carry on.”

******

Even though Thursday knew what was coming, had explicitly asked for this case, nothing could prepare him for how wrong it all felt.

All so, so wrong.

He and Jakes were sitting on one side of the table in the interrogation room, with its familiar two-toned green concrete walls and its same old and familiar scuffed wooden chairs, when Strange opened the door for Morse, gesturing for him to take a seat on the opposite side.

All of the sharpness in Morse’s blue eyes was gone, blinked out, making him to look almost as if he were a stranger.

And perhaps Morse felt like one. How else to explain why he might look about him, utterly befuddled, as if he had never seen the place before?

He looked as if he might have been crying at some point—he had that telltale worn look about him, as if all the light had gone out of him. And, what was worse, there was a prominent cut searing its way right across his forehead, just turning to purple, right where his head must have struck the steering wheel on impact.

Thursday felt his heart constrict in his chest at the sight of him. 

He had thought that he was in hell that night at Blenheim Vale.

But he hadn’t been. Not by a long shot.

This.

This, was hell.

How had everything gotten so out of hand?

_Oh, lad._

Joss Bixby stepped in, then, just a few paces behind Morse, his face tense, holding his shoulders as if he expected to find that the mundane, windowless little room might be too small, too cramped, for his grand presence, his most august person.

He looked more irritated than concerned; but, of course, Thursday had the feeling that Bixby was one of those men who believed there was no problem he couldn’t solve with the flash of a smile and the stroke of a pen on a chequebook.

They filed in before them without a word, Morse collapsing softly into one of the wooden chairs without looking behind him, so that it was a miracle he landed on the seat of it rather than on the floor. Whereas Bixby, by contrast, actually took the time to straighten the crease in his trousers before taking a seat in the chair beside him.

Bixby half-crossed one ankle over his knee, then, as if resting at his ease, and looked at them with bored contempt.

“Perhaps the Inspector wouldn’t mind telling us what all this is about?” he asked. 

Thursday scowled. So that was how it was going to go, was it? It wasn’t as if uniform didn’t tell them exactly what it was about when they had pulled them over. It was just the sort of glib facade that set Thursday’s blood on a low simmer.

“I’ll tell you what this is about. We’ve got a young woman, struck by a car, found about twenty feet off the road right between Crevecoeur Hall and your place.”

Bixby’s face registered nothing. The man must be a menace at the card table. 

“Uniform went round, to find your car, with a dent in it,” Thursday continued, “and the engine still warm.”

“Well. I’m sorry to have to burst your bubble of circumstantial evidence, old man,” Bixby said. “I’m very sorry to hear of such a tragedy, of course. But it’s naught to do with us.”

“No?” Thursday asked. “How do you explain the photographs uniform took of that dent, then? I didn’t notice any damage to that car when I saw it at Crevecoeur Hall this morning.” 

“Ah,” Bixby said. “Well, you see, the truth is altogether dull. We struck a deer. It’s a sad thing. Beautiful creature. But that’s hardly a criminal offence. It’s a common hazard on that road, I’m afraid.” 

“A deer?” Thursday asked. 

“Yes,” Bixby said. 

The calm sense of assurance on Bixby’s face irritated Thursday no end. Smug bastard, to come in here with that. No concern at all for the young woman. Careless, heartless, the lot of them.

“So that’s your story? Best you can come up with? You just so happened to hit a deer, right within the same time frame of only a few hours in which a young woman was killed? Awfully lot of reckless drivers on the road, then, for that hour of the day.”

Bixby shrugged. “Sounds as if it only took one, I suppose. But it wasn’t us.”

“Mmmmm…” Thursday said, leaning back, as if acquiescing to this point.

Because if that was all that it was, then why .... 

“And so, after you hit this deer, you just so happened to decide to skip the country?”

Bixby snorted. “It was nothing so dramatic as that. Why shouldn’t we go away, for the week-end? Neither of us were under arrest, old man. I think you’re rather ungrateful. Morse all but solved your case for you, if you ask me. Why shouldn’t he take a holiday, if he wants?”

“I told him to stay put. That we had a few more questions for him,” Thursday said. 

“We were planning to return Monday. Presumably you had other things on your plate before you got round to Morse. Apprehending Lady Georgina, for one, I would have imagined.”

“A weekend trip, eh? Just a little holiday?”

“Mmmm,” Bixby said.

“Funny that the arresting officer noted you didn’t take any luggage with you. Looks pretty spur of the moment to me.”

“A little spontaneity was never against that law, last I looked. It’s not as if there are no shops in Paris. Why go there at all, if not to buy some new things?” Bixby said. 

“New things. I see. Even down to a toothbrush? What? Toothbrushes here in Britain not good enough for you? What about Morse here? Doubt if he’s got the money for a new Parisian wardrobe.”

Morse was once more keeping his eyes trained on some spot on the floor that seemed to hold fascination for only him, just as he had at Crevecoeur Hall that morning. But as much as he seemed to be tuning them out, he flinched at Thursday’s final words, and Thursday regretted the tone of them at once. 

But Morse, his Morse, would understand. He knew how he felt about this sort of wiseacre. Knew he couldn’t stand the feeling that some bastard was laughing at them, how it always dug under his skin. 

And how was it that Morse could stomach it, sitting there, listening to all of this folderol? Why was he letting Bixby speak for him? He was a copper. He knew it was best to make a clean breast of it. Or at least to say _something,_ for Chrissakes.

Bixby pursed his mouth, leaning back in the chair. 

“Well, old man. I’m sorry. I’m sure you’d love nothing better than to wrap this up after the week you’ve had, but I’m afraid it’s not so simple. It’s all just been a ghastly mistake. I’m not sure if we’ve much else to say. We’ll wait for our brief to arrive if it’s all the same.”

Thursday felt a new surge of irritation at that. What was this _‘we’_ business? Was this this the royal we, he was using? Or was he somehow dragging Morse along with him into some sort of unified front?

He had certainly used the plural pronoun carefully enough in order to avoid specifying which one of them was driving. What did he hope to gain, by such subterfuge? It made no sense, from such a man. Why not pin it on Morse? It was clear as day and as the cut across his forehead that he had been the one behind the wheel. 

“So. How about you, Morse?” Thursday asked. “You’ve been fairly quiet.”

Bixby huffed a scornful laugh. “So that’s your tactic is it? Interrogate a man when he’s down? The man was nearly killed by a tiger this morning. Oh, good show, Inspector.”

But Morse lifted his gaze, looking steadily at him, as if Bixby had not spoken. His eyes were bleary and red-rimmed, and Thursday could tell at once he had been right; that he had recently come through a bout of weeping, even though it was certainly a little late for that now. Strange, still standing at the door, must have made the same assessment, because suddenly, he looked decidedly uncomfortable, and turned away. 

When Morse spoke, his voice was low, rusty from disuse. 

“It was a deer,” he said. 

Thursday paused at that.

The four words, so simply spoken, were far more believable than all of Bixby’s crisply delivered orations. So much so that Thursday felt his surety shaken.

As well as a fleeting breath of hope, as subtle as the rustle of a bird’s wings. 

_Might_ Bixby have been telling the truth? Could this all be the result of a terrible series of coincidences?

One thing was certain: their behavior certainly made them look guilty as hell. 

Christ, Morse, Thursday longed to say. Couldn’t you have taken one damned suitcase? Made it look like something other than some sort of desperate flight? 

What was he doing, anyway, jumping into a car with a relative stranger, when Thursday had asked him to sit tight and wait for him?

Morse attracted trouble like a magnet.

Always had.

And, perhaps, he had again, right now.

“Am I allowed to know?” Morse asked.

“Know what?” Jakes replied. 

“Who . . . who it was. It wasn’t ... It wasn’t Kay, was it?”

“Her name was Jeanne Hearne.”

Morse flinched. 

“What?” Jakes asked, sharply. “Did you know her?”

“Yes. I ... Just from a few parties. I went with them once, to one at Maplewick Hall. With her and Bruce. They were having an affair.” 

A sharp line formed between Jakes’ heavy brows, then. “According to Donn, Belborough was trying to get something going with Lady Georgina.”

“He was,” Morse allowed. “He ... It’s all a game to him, Bruce. He... He's a bit of a ... a serial philanderer, you might say.”

Morse swallowed and looked back down at the spot on the floor. 

“She was driving Bruce’s car,” he said. “Georgina. Miss Hearne must have seen it. Seen George was driving it. Perhaps she wanted to talk to her.” 

“Or confront her,” Jakes said, seeming to allow the possibility. 

“Only Lady Georgina kept on going,” Thursday concluded. 

It was an odd moment—suddenly, it felt as if the table had been flipped, as if they were working together again, just as they should be.

Morse didn’t belong with those people. Never did, and that was the truth of it. 

Morse’s eyes met his, and they were just as solemn as they might be at the end of a case. But then the light in them diffused, died out, once more. 

“George ... George wouldn’t do that,” he said.

Thursday snorted.

Well, they had to disagree there. 

But then. ....

Damn it, Morse. Why couldn’t he have taken one goddamned change of clothes? Anything to make it look like other than it seemed? Because what if they could not apprehend Lady Georgina? Or the car? They needed both to clear Morse of all doubt... And, considering the state of mind the young woman was in, she might well have run the whole thing right into the lake, taking her secrets with her, not to be uncovered for decades. 

  


Strange turned then, answering an urgent knock on the door. He stepped outside, half-closing it behind him, and for a few moments, they all sat in silence, straining to hear the purport of the murmured conversation in the hall.

“That was forensics,” Strange said, when he stepped back inside. “They retrieved some hairs caught in the headlamp of Bixby’s car. Just a few fragments, really. They’re putting a rush on it. Taking it in over to Dr. DeBryn.”

Morse’s eyes flashed up at that.

“Max?” he asked, breathing the syllable as if it were the very essence of hope.

“We should get a call from him within twenty minutes, I expect,” Strange said. 

Morse’s body seemed to sag with relief, and Thursday’s heart swelled. As bad as it had looked for him, he certainly seemed heartened to hear the news, rather than alarmed by it.

“Ah,” Bixby said, folding his arms and looking satisfied. “See. There you are. Something other than your host of second-guesses.” 

Thursday might have been tempted to glare at Bixby once more, but he hadn’t the stomach for it. He had almost come to believe them, and he was glad of it. Perhaps Morse’s flight had not been to flee the scene of the crime, after all, but to flee the ghosts of that morning? To flee Lake Silence at last all together? Simple as that?

Everything Morse did these days seemed to be done solely on impulse.

The lad was just not thinking.

No.

  
It was as if he was trying not to think.

Not to think about what?

Thursday sighed. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.

Something in Morse’s face seemed to cloud, then, and once again, Thursday felt something in his chest shift with the change in Morse’s expression, and his heart grew troubled with it. It was as if the room was turned round again, flipped upside down, the atmosphere shifting, plummeting, along with the growing fear in Morse’s face.

It made no sense: If Morse was so sure he’d be vindicated, why should he suddenly look as if his world was falling to pieces? 

“The forensics team,” Morse asked. “Were they city or county?”

“Morse,” Jakes said. “You know that’s not for you to ask. Or to know.”

Morse’s eyes swerved at once to Strange, the authority clear in his gaze as he addressed the one officer in the room who he thought did not outrank him.

Perhaps Morse had missed the stripes on Strange’s sleeves, because, truth of it was, he no longer did.

“Were they city or county?” Morse repeated. 

But Strange, too, seemed to forget that fact under the force Morse’s words.

“Uhhh,” Strange said, hesitating. 

_“Were they city or county?”_

“They were . . . uh . . . They were county, matey.”

Every ounce of strength that Morse had seemed to gain over the last few minutes seemed to leech out of him then, the light fast retreating in his eyes, drawing in on itself, as he twisted his hands together in his lap. Truth be told, he looked a little mad. 

“It’s over,” he breathed. “It’s done. It’s … it’s all over.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous, Morse," Bixby said. "They’ll test the hairs, and see they belonged to a deer. And then we’ll go.” 

“No. No. That’s not how this works. That’s not how they operate.”

“I think you should just wait and let them do their jobs. Then we’ll be cleared. And that’s that, old man.” 

But a surging edge of hysteria was rising fast and shrill in Morse’s voice.

 _“Truth? Truth?_ It doesn’t matter, the truth. Didn’t you know that? They framed me once before on nothing but a scarf. And now they’ll have ... they’ll have all _this._.. It’s ...”

“Morse,” Thursday began.. 

But Morse cut across him, his eyes blazing as if someone had flipped a switch, the blue of them as piercing as a benediction. 

“Don't say it can't happen, sir! Even you don’t believe me.”

“Morse....”

He took a final rasping breath, and then buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking in silent sobs.

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It _was_ me. It was _me_ ..… I … I was careless. I was tired I was thinking of a hundred different things. I must have been going too fast ...”

Thursday’s heart began to hammer to the beat of his words, quickening as they all spilled out, just like the words of so many he had heard before, words from those who had sat in just that very chair, breaking down before him in confession.

What was he saying? 

Oh, god. Perhaps.... Perhaps it had been Morse, after all.

“And it just leapt out," Morse cried. “It leapt out of nowhere. It was beautiful, it was like a figure in a stained-glass window. And I killed it. I _killed_ it.”

And then Thursday felt he could breathe again, even though the room around him still felt like it was spinning with the horror of it. Morse was overtired, that was all. Clearly, he had been up all the night before at some-to-do, and then there had been the near-miss of a tiger attack and the shock of it...

It was as if the circles in his mind that he had tried to still for so long were protesting against him, lurching suddenly into overdrive.

“I told you,” Bixby said. “It rolled over and got back on its feet straight off. Tore right off into the woods.”

“How long could it have survived? It will wander off, and collapse somewhere, and it’s all alone and . . .”

“Morse,” Thursday said.

He tore his hands away from his face, and looked up at him, a plea in his eyes. 

“I’m the tiger. It was me! I’m the tiger!”

Then he buried his face in his hands once more, his fingers raking through his unkempt hair, clutching at fistfuls of curls as if desperate for something to hold on to. Then he went utterly still, as the others looked at once another, decidedly uneasy.

It was hard to know what to make of it, what to do.

Morse never esteemed himself all that highly, but he had always prided himself on his fine mind, whether he would admit it or no.

And now they sat watching as it broke apart before them. 

“I wish you just let it kill me,” he murmured at last, taking one last deep and shuddering breath before going still. “Oh, god.”

The room went utterly silent, and Bixby’s tanned face drained, his silky demeanor falling away like a slip cloth, as he seemed to be weighing something in his mind.

And then, his mask was once more back in place, as he looked from Morse back across the table.

“Look here, Inspector. I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement,” Bixby said. 

The sorrow in Thursday’s heart turned once more to stone.

“Not thinking of adding bribery to the list are you?”

Bixby made an expression of distaste.

“No. I was thinking of another sort of deal. Plea bargain, is it? I can see you won’t be deterred from your course. And now with this additional evidence, I might as well come clean.”

“About what?” Jakes asked. 

“This case. I can see the game’s up. The best course, I suppose, is to make a full confession. Throw myself on the mercy of the court, I suppose. That’s all there is for it.”

 _“What?_ ” Thursday snapped. “Just a moment ago you were certain this new evidence would vindicate you.” 

“Yes. Well. It seems it’s all a bit more . . . . So. Yes, I was driving. All right? Consider this my full confession. Just what you hoped for. What’s the phrase? Open and shut?” 

Thursday felt the blood beginning to pound once more in his ears. He couldn’t take much more of it. What game was Bixby playing at now?

“You were driving the car?” Jakes asked.

“Yes.”

“Then why does it look as if it was Morse here who had a close encounter with the steering wheel?”

“He . . . Well. The the truth of it is, I simply wanted to spare him further embarrassment. But. The thing of it is, he hit his head getting out of the car. Stumbled, really. I think . . .” 

And then he lowered his voice, as if speaking conspiratorially.

“I think he might have gotten hold of something again. Drugs. It’s a sad thing, but there you are. Sign of the times and all that.”

Morse, who had appeared not to be listening in the slightest, suddenly raised his face from behind his hands, looking outraged. “I have not! Sir! I _haven’t!”_

But Bixby went on, as if Morse had not spoken. “He’s clearly been . . . Well, I hate to say it . . . but we think he had a little episode just this morning. We were all talking about something quite different, when he came out with the most fanciful story. About some sort of Leopard cult in Africa? In which sacrificial victims are shredded with some sort of ceremonial claw, if you can believe it. It was all quite mad.”

“I was thinking of the case! Sir!”

A tremor of impatience moved across Bixby’s poker face, and Thursday, for once, agreed with him. He wished Morse would stop it. 

Not because it interfered with an orchestrated ruse, as was the case with Joss Bixby. But because it pained him that, even now, Morse seemed to care more about what he, Thursday, thought of him, than about taking the opportunity to extricate himself from a hit and run charge. 

“You’ve seen that car,” Bixby said. “It’s a custom job. And it’s certainly an open secret that Morse has had rather a rough time of it lately. Do you honestly think I would let someone drive it who has clearly been… well, you can see for yourself. I doubt if he has much of a clear picture at all of the past twenty-four hours. Better to let him go, all around. It’s me you’re after, after all.”

“Why are you doing this?” Morse asked. 

But Jakes ignored him, keeping his full focus on Bixby.

“So. It’s your contention that you were driving?” Jakes said.

“Yes,” Bixby said. “I think we’ve established that from the beginning. It's my car, isn't it, that’s the subject of all of this speculation?”

“I don’t know what we’ve ‘ _established_ ,’” Jakes said. “As you were leaving, I saw you toss Morse here the keys. It was Morse who drove off.”

The poker face didn’t falter—there was only the barest or wavers, in fact, in the dark eyes as Bixby recalculated. Only someone as adept as Thursday in spotting such things would have noticed it.

“Ah,” Bixby said.

“Yes. Ah.”

“Well. Now I remember. As it just so happens, I did let him drive. Just down the drive of Crevecoeur Hall, understand. Thought it might steady his nerves. But alas, I fear it was ill-advised. We switched.”

“You switched,” Jakes said, and it was a statement, not a question. 

“Yes. Surely Morse remembers much that clearly enough.” He turned, then, to Morse. “Don’t you remember? Me telling you to move over?”

Morse looked so worn down by this point, he didn’t seem to know what to make of anything anymore, as if he was far past all understanding, as if all the circling wheels had been spinning so fast that a cog had gotten caught, jamming up the works.

“Yes . . . I . . . but . . .”

“So, gentlemen,” Bixby said. "As you’ve no further use for Morse here, I suggest you may as well let him go. You know what happened just this morning. And now here you are, questioning him, quite aggressively, I might add, getting him turned about without even a brief. He might even have cause for a civil complaint. It sounds as if you know him personally, Inspector Thursday. Frankly, I’m surprised at you. One wonders why you are on the case at all.”

“Why are you doing this?” Morse asked again.

“So, when Morse goes down to the clerk’s office. I know they won’t give him my keys. But do you think thy might give him some money for a cab, at least? Or is he supposed to walk all the way home after being detained here?”

Bixby looked expectantly to Strange, as if awaiting his answer. 

“I …. I suppose they can release a few pounds to him, as they have your assent," Strange allowed. 

“Splendid,” Bixby said. “So. Morse. Off you go.”

But Morse remained where he was, looking once more utterly confused, whether by Bixby’s nonstop flourish of words, or at suddenly being addressed as though he were some sort of secretary, Thursday couldn’t say.

And who could blame him, really? Even Thursday didn't know much of what to make of it. Wasn’t as if he hadn't seen such cases before. A daughter lying to cover for her father, a husband for his wife.

But Bixby had known Morse for ... how long? A couple of weeks, at best?

Why should he pull card after card from his sleeve to get Morse off the hook?

“Hang on,” Jakes said. “Even by your accounting, Morse is still an accessory after the fact.” 

“You can't be serious, surely,” Bixby replied. “Does he look as if he has any idea as to what’s happening, sergeant? He was just attacked by a tiger this morning.” 

“Look, we don’t need any theatrical confessions. We are trying to get to the truth.” 

“But I am telling the truth, old man.”

It was bizarre, the sincerity with which he said the words, when he was obviously dancing around everything but the truth. He kept saying that “he’d confessed” but he never actually said he’d hit that woman.

Careful, so careful, he was. He hadn’t said a damn thing, really, that a good brief couldn’t get him out of later.

“Morse,” Bixby said. “You’re going now, all right? It’s over. It’s over.”

Nothing but the shock of hearing his own words coming out of Bixby’s mouth could have thrown Thursday off kilter enough to quell his burgeoning rage at the farce of it. He took a deep breath, steading his nerves, and was just beginning to open his mouth to speak, when there was a flurry of a knock on the door. 

Strange opened it at once, to find a young DC on the threshold, strangely out of breath. 

“We got the report in. From Dr. DeBryn. The hairs are a match to a fallow deer. And ... Sir....”

Thursday could tell at once that there was some greater chaos going on downstairs than a mere phone call delivering the results of a report.

“Yes, constable?” 

“Lady Georgina Mortmaigne. She heard on the radio that Morse and Bixby had been arrested. She’s turned herself in. She’s downstairs, just now.” 

Morse, who had been sitting as if stunned throughout the bewildering proceedings, suddenly lurched up, grabbed a bin from the corner or the room, leaned over and vomited into it. 

Thursday grimaced. There was hardly a thing left in him.

“The woman she hit,” the constable said. “Jeanne Hearne. They asked a friend of hers about what she might have been doing out there. Evidently she was having an affair with Bruce Belborough. She’d heard he’d been seen with Lady Georgina at a party, and....”

All the explanations hardly registered. Nothing much registered beyond Morse’s thin frame, hunched over the old, dented bin...

“Thank you, constable,” he said, pacing over to Morse’s chair.

“Morse,” Thursday sighed. He came around to where Morse was slumped and took his arm. He half-expected him to pull it away, but instead he just sat there, like a rag doll. “Come on, lad. Come on. Up you get.”

Bixby rose at once, straightening his jacket. “Well. I take it we’re free to go.” 

Thursday rounded on Bixby at once. 

“I wouldn’t be in such a hurry. You’ve a little matter of a false confession to clear up,” Thursday said. 

Bixby scowled. “I was coerced, obviously. You wouldn’t believe the truth. So. What can I say, Inspector? You beat me down. Simple as that.” 

He looked about as beaten down as a cat in cream, but anyhow....

“I’m sure your big-name London brief can clear it all up in no time, once he arrives,” Thursday said. 

The best thing for Morse at this point, as far as Thursday was concerned, was to give him a break from the whole lot of them. 

Thursday and Bixby exchanged a long look that seemed to evolve into a ridiculous stare-down of sorts, one that Thursday had fully expected to win, but somehow, it turned out just the opposite was the case: somehow, he felt himself slightly lowered in his own estimation, after Bixby’s long and thorough assessment.

But maybe it was deserved. He’d blundered about, doing more damage than good in his ineptitude, circling around Morse as if he were a tiger, as if he were afraid of him, as if one false move might send him over the edge, or further into retreat. 

But no more. 

He hadn’t handled it as well as he might have, it was true. But it was all so new. Children believe their fathers know all, not understanding that they, too, are just as powerless, just as confused in the face of the unknown. He’d just hadn’t known...Joan and Sam had been so easy in retrospect, they just hadn’t tested him like this, and pray god they never would.

Well. No more. 

“Come on, Morse,” he said, taking Morse’s arm and half pulling him out of the chair. “Let's go home, now, all right? Win’s been asking about you.”

It wasn’t entirely a lie; Win had been at her aunt’s, but before she left she had asked about him from time to time. And anyhow, it hardly mattered, as Morse seemed to be paying not the slightest attention to what anyone said, lost in his own flood of relief, so that he was almost weak with it. 

He led Morse over to the door, and turned to Jakes.

“All right, sergeant? Can you wrap this up then?”

“Sir,” Jakes said.

He looked to Bixby once more, who seemed about to protest, but then, something in him relaxed, seemed to stand down, although the judgement in his eyes had not entirely faded. 

Well. 

Fair enough, then.


	16. Collide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably should have divided this into two chapters, but I just couldn't leave his story on another cliffie.... :D

Thursday wasn’t sure how he managed to get Morse down the stairs, as lanky as he was—all arms and legs that seemed to have lost any will of their own. He was grateful for it, this new listlessness, even as it made it difficult to guide him along, even as it was alarming.

Wasn’t much like Morse at all, to allow himself be so easily led, to be so suddenly docile. It seemed as if the lad had been fighting him with every breath he had all the summer—giving him hell when he had come out to see him at the lake house, refusing to return with him to Oxford after that horror of a night in the woods outside of Crevecoeur Hall, slinking off through the French doors after the arrest of Emma Carr—but now it seemed, at last, as if all the fight had gone out of him.

Thursday put one hand on the dampened waves of Morse’s head as he eased him into the passenger’s side of the Jag, cupping his skull so that it did not hit doorframe, setting him into the seat as he would a handcuffed suspect.

And then he shut the door as quickly as he could, before Morse’s thoughts could find the chance to catch up with him.

It wasn’t until Thursday came back round to the driver’s side and settled himself behind the wheel that Morse finally spoke.

“This is wrong,” he said. “This is all wrong.”

“Yeah?” Thursday asked. “Why? Seems about right to me.”

“It’s too strange …. sitting here.”

Thursday huffed a rueful laugh. It was true that Morse was accustomed to driving, but Thursday was hardly going to trust him with that in such a state, after the day he had had.

“I’m driving, Morse. You’ll just have to get used to a slightly different view.”

“No. It’s not that. It’s .... Being in this car. It’s like … It’s as if nothing ever happened.”

Thursday scowled. Because life went on, didn’t it? Coming home, after the war, of course it had seemed strange, the rapidity with which he had been expected to pick up the job again, pick up his old life, just as if nothing had ever happened.

But what was he going to do about it?

It was those damned wheels that were to blame, that damned reel of tape, spinning on and on in Morse’s head. It was far past time someone flipped the switch, turned the thing off, if only for a little while. 

Thursday eased his foot onto the gas and pulled away from the curb. The Jag was just beginning to pick up speed when Morse went to open the passenger’s side door, as if he was thinking of hopping back out.

“Hey now! Stop that. Just stop it, Morse,” he said.

Somehow, Thursday managed it; somehow he was able to inject enough authority into his voice that Morse actually obeyed him, even though he looked mulish enough about it.

And then he said nothing more; rather he simply sat there, looking straight ahead, maintaining a steady but dull gaze through the windscreen.

Throughout the ride home, Thursday kept expecting Morse’s mood to shift again, for him to pipe up with some sort of protest, but, instead, he remained silent, and it wasn’t until Thursday turned into his drive that he realized why: Once he put the Jag into park and looked over at his former bagman, he saw that his head was bowed forward at an unnaturally sharp angle, that his chest was rising and falling with the even cadences of sleep.

“Morse,” he said.

But there was no response.

He put a hand on Morse’s shoulder, then, and straight away he could feel the knob of it right through the fabric of his jacket.

_“Morse,”_ he said again, a little more forcefully.

Morse’s head snapped up, and for a moment, he simply sat there, blinking in confusion at the front of his family’s perfectly ordinary house—taking in the arching brick doorway, the slightly unkempt shrubbery and the solid white lines of the pop out window—as if he had never seen such a house before.

“We’re home, Morse,” Thursday said. 

“I can’t go in there,” Morse replied, wonderingly, as if Thursday had lost his marbles for even bringing him to such a place.

“My house,” Thursday said, “Why not?”

“Mrs. Thursday.”

Thursday snorted. Morse had certainly seen better days, that much was true. But it was hardly as if his Win was some wilting flower who might swoon at the sight of him. More likely to take a warm flannel to that forehead and feed him up on a pan of warmed-through stew. And anyway...

“Win’s not at home,” Thursday said. “She’s visiting her aunt’s, with Joan. And if I know Sam, he’s out at the pub. So it’s only us. No one to see you.”

Although maybe there should be . . . maybe there should be _someone_ to see him …

If only to help him to prove to himself that he wasn’t a ghost.

“Come on, then,” Thursday said, getting out of the Jag in the most perfunctory manner that he could.

Slowly, Morse got out of the car and followed him up to the stoop, while Thursday turned the key in the lock, pushed the door open, and then put a hand between Morse’s shoulder blades, setting him into motion across the threshold, still unconvinced that he might not try to make a break for it.

“Go in. Go on,” he urged, before stepping in behind him, flipping on the light in the hall and closing the door.

Morse took a few steps past the hall stand and then came to a halt at the juncture of the den and the kitchen, as if unsure what he should do with himself next.

After a summer of circling between the wilds of his lake house and all of those grand estates laid out on sprawling green lawns running up to the broad water, the Thursdays’ narrow little home, filled with Win’s doilies and homey bric-a-brac, must have seemed as exotic as some far-off country.

And Morse wasn’t wrong, perhaps, to feel that way—he _did_ look out of place, disheveled and disreputable in a rumpled evening suit—making his way through his family’s thoroughly domestic little sphere like a tiger, volatile and unpredictable, pacing about the house.

Well. Only one good way to tame a wild animal.

Thursday hung up his coat and hat and then steered Morse into the dining room.

“Sit down,” he said. 

Morse sat.

Two-word commands, it seemed, he responded to easily enough. It was as if each word Thursday uttered was like a heavy stone slowly falling, making its way through the murky, dark lake of Morse’s head, before finding its way home, making impact, sinking into the fine pebbles at the bottom.

The fewer stones to muddle the process, the better. 

“Wait there,” Thursday rumbled.

He went into the kitchen, then, and opened the fridge, retrieving the pot of stew Win had left for him and for Sam and separating some out into a smaller pan to warm it through. It seemed to take an age to get it going—most likely because of the tension mounting in his jaw and at his temples, as he strained to listen for faint sounds of Morse in the quiet of the house, anything that might alert him that Morse was once more planning to do a runner.

But, no—miraculously enough, when Thursday went back into the dining room, Morse was still there, sitting just as he had left him, his gaze cast down as if he was making a study of the lace patterns of Win’s tablecloth. From his blank expression, it was apparent that his newfound tractability owed less to any persuasive abilities on Thursday’s part, than to the fact that the lad was simply tired.

Thursday didn’t allow himself to believe for one moment that he had won any sort of victory, bagging his quarry at last.

It was more of a case that Morse had, simply, finally, run himself out.

As Thursday approached the table, however, the big eyes swerved up to him, alert once more—alarmed and slightly dismayed.

Wasn’t as if he could blame him. It must have been awkward as hell for Morse, sitting there while he waited on him, just as if his former governor were one of the servants on staff at one of the great houses he’d been frequenting that summer. 

Thursday tried to compensate by putting the bowl and spoon down with as little grace as possible, plopping it down before Morse just he might toss the crusts of his sandwich into the grass for the birds.

“There,” he said. “Now get that down you.”

Morse looked for a moment into the bowl, as if he was thinking of something else entirely, giving Thursday ample time to wince at the words.

They were the exact ones he had said to Morse when he had taken him out to the pub garden, ordered him his first beer.

_“I don’t drink.”_

_“Very commendable. Now get that down you.”_

Thursday remembered how Morse had taken a tentative sip and then pulled his glass away, leaving behind a spot of foam adhering to his upper lip and a look of thoughtful appreciation dawning across his face. At the time, it had all seemed amusing enough.

Now, he wished he could go back to that moment.

_“I don’t drink.”_

_“Well, fair enough, then. See that you keep it that way.”_

Thursday sighed and sat down in a chair opposite him, just as Morse picked up the spoon and began to work at the stew. Thursday had feared that he might balk at it—Morse couldn’t feel any too wonderful, having heaved his guts out twice that day, but it seemed he had partially recovered himself on that score.

And his instincts were spot on, after all: after a few mouthfuls, the blank and desperate expression on Morse’s face began to soften a bit.

When was the last time the lad had had a real meal? Thursday knew from his days in the army how hunger could affect the mind.

People were always much simpler than you might imagine.

Even Morse.

For a while, they sat in silence—and it was a companionable silence— the only sound the clink of Morse’s spoon against the side of his bowl. 

And then, suddenly, Morse paused and looked up at him.

"What will they do with Bixby?” he asked.

Thursday raised his eyebrows, surprised. A fine thing to be worried about, after such a day.

“He's probably half-way back to Lake Silence by now, now that that Lady Georgina’s most likely given her statement and his big wheel brief has arrived,” Thursday said.

“What will happen to George?”

Thursday sighed, heavily.

“I don’t know, lad.”

Morse sat for a moment, considering.

“It must have been an accident,” he said. “I don’t think she meant it. I don’t think she meant to hurt anyone. Not really.”

“Yeah, well. She may not have meant to, but she did just the same. We don’t mean a lot of things. Doesn’t mean they don’t happen.”

“I think she just wanted Lorenz to know what it was like. And Jeanne Hearne. That had to be an accident. She was so upset when she left. Bruce was . . . she was upset. She wasn’t thinking.”

“I suppose.”

“She ... She came back. She did come back. She knew that I . . . that I couldn’t . . .”

He bowed his head, then, suddenly looking faintly ill. Thursday wished he had gotten a bit more stew down him before he swerved along this line of thought, but you couldn’t have everything.

“What do you think will happen to her?”

“I just don’t know, Morse.”

Thursday honestly couldn’t say, having left the nick, not knowing how it all had gone. Most likely, she’d be sent off for evaluation, given her apparent instability.

But perhaps Morse was right. It did seem as if she was trying to recapture the tiger, once she realized what it was she had unleashed.

But all the regrets and remorse in the world wouldn’t be much of a help to Ingrid Hjort or Hector Lorenz, or Ricky Parker or Jeanne Hearne. 

“Why did he do that?” Morse asked. 

It took Thursday a moment to follow the tangent of Morse’s words. He would have supposed that he’d have said “ _why did she do that?_ ” rather than _“he,”_ considering they had been speaking of Lady Georgina.

But then it came to him.

Bixby.

They were back on that con-artist, were they? 

“I dunno, Morse,” Thursday said, a little more shortly than he intended. “Why does anyone do anything?”

That question was one that Thursday might well be tempted to apply to all of them, to all of those colorful inhabitants of Lake Silence over the past summer. Was it any wonder, really, that Morse should come to this, when tossed in amongst them? They acted without thinking, seeking only the next new thrill, chasing the next new high—drugs or drink or sex or money or parties.

They didn’t seem to think so much as act.

Whereas Morse was born to think. Couldn’t stop it even when he tried.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Morse said, a slight edge of anger to his voice. “He hardly knows me.”

Thursday scowled. It was a little late in the day for Morse to be cottoning on to the fact that the man was inscrutable, that he was obviously not all that he seemed, considering he had jumped in the car with him readily enough, all set to fly off to another country, despite the fact that he, Thursday, had told him to stay put.

Any seven-year-old would know better. 

What on earth could have persuaded Morse, the most rational of men, to behave so recklessly, as if he were three inches short of a yard?

Dimly, the answer came to him. And he knew that it was true because it was the answer that Morse himself had given, right after the tiger attack, as he had sat on the ottoman at Crevecoeur Hall, pale with shock, murmuring those words that had fallen so easily out of his mouth. 

_“She wanted to love someone. Or she wanted someone to love her.”_

So. This Bixby character. He swoops down upon Lake Silence out of nowhere, in a cloud of smoke and mirrors, with easy answers and deep pockets, and Morse goes off willingly enough.

Straight from the dreamworld of Nick Wilding’s Enchanted Place to the dreamworld of a consummate showman’s overblown country manor house, with all the bells and whistles and glitter and gilt of a London nightclub.

To the outside eye, Morse’s behavior might seem tangential, impulsive, utterly irrational, but Thursday could see a definite pattern to it.

Somewhere along the line, somewhere amidst the dark fog of the Masons’ threats, Morse seemed to have done a definite 180—had flown from flinging his heart before a steady stream of women with vulnerable, soft smiles and broken wings to men who lived within a bubble of their own invincibility.

Safer, weren’t they?

How could the Masons touch Nick Wilding?

How could they hope to touch Joss Bixby?

_“Or she wanted someone to love her.”_

Was that all there was really, to the mystery of Morse? The restlessness and the crosswords, the esoteric connections vying against that strange disconnect that always seemed to envelop him? All summed up in that one telling sentence, a sentence that perhaps said more about himself than Lady Georgina?

It was as if, despite the austerity of his gaze, despite the sharp intelligence and the haughty impatiences, there was a part of him that was perpetually twelve years old, still waiting for his mother to come back. 

“Here,” Thursday said, pushing himself back from the table. “I’ll go upstairs. Find you a pair of Sam’s pajamas. You can shower up.”

“That’s …”

“It’s no trouble. How long you been wearing that?”

Morse looked down at his evening suit.

“I . . . I don’t know, sir,” he said wonderingly, as if shocked at his own answer.

Thursday could almost see it in his eyes, the glimmer of the realization, those wheels beginning to grind to a halt, to slowly begin to turn in the opposite direction.

And without another word, Thursday rose and left Morse to his thoughts.

****

Morse came around the corner and into the den, his face filled with curiosity, as if he had been wondering where Thursday had gone off to. Dressed in a pair of Sam’s old pajamas with the sleeves riding two inches too short on his wrists, his face pink from the shower and his hair damp and spiraling, he looked far more like a kid getting over a bad cold than any sort of dangerous bohemian.

Thursday looked up at him from his spot on the end of the couch.

“The football’s on,” he said, by way of an explanation.

“Oh,” Morse replied.

He stood for a moment, as if uncertain what to do, and then came in and sat down in a gangly heap, sinking into the other end of the sofa.

“Good... er .... match?” he asked. 

“Nil-nil so far.”

“Oh.”

Thursday chanced a glance over at Morse. He was watching the screen, but Thursday doubted that any of the flickering black-and-white images were registering in his mind in the slightest.

Well, if he was bored, too bad, then. If he was bored, then Thursday was glad of it. Seemed as if Morse could do with a little of the mundane after the past few weeks he’d had.

“The ref’s sent off Rattin, mind,” Thursday said. 

“Has he?”

“The Argentine skipper.” 

“Yeah,” Morse said, as if he understood just what he meant.

Even though it was clear as crystal that he might as well have been speaking Sanskrit. 

Although perhaps that was a poor analogy.

It might be possible that Morse actually _knew_ Sanskrit. 

“Poor old Rattin,” Morse sighed then, as if the Argentine captain was the hero of an opera who had taken a dagger in the chest. 

Thursday shook his head. “Trying to talk football with you is like trying to show a card trick to a dog.”

Morse looked at him a little imperiously and then pulled his legs up, tucking them under him sideways, making a great show of leaning against the corner of where the arm of the couch joined the back, as if he were endeavoring to sit up straighter in his seat in order to pay better attention, but Thursday wasn’t fooled in the slightest.

Sure enough, with his shoulders hitched back into the corner, it wasn’t long before he was easing his full weight back against it, and not much longer after that before his eyes were slowly drifting closed. By the end of the next commercial break, his head was tipped back, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing with the deep and even rising and falling of his chest.

Well, good enough, then.

Nothing much wrong with the lad that a decent meal and a decent night’s sleep couldn’t cure.

Nature’s remedy, that’s what Win always said.

It had been a hell of a day. Of a week.

Eh, who was he kidding?

It had been a hell of a few months.

Thursday leaned back and rubbed his eyes, resting them for a minute.

“Dad,” came a voice. “ _Dad.”_

Thursday opened his eyes. Right away, he could tell something was wrong. The room was darker, cast only in a circle of yellow lamplight, and the telly had gone to static and snow. Sam was standing there, in the doorway, his eyebrows raised in bewilderment.

For a moment, he had forgotten what the hell he was doing there, down in the den, until he felt it: something like a sharp foot being pressed into the side of his leg. He turned to see Morse, sprawled out on the couch beside him, his head buried in a throw pillow, his lanky legs taking up two-thirds of the cushions, his knees half-hanging over the edge.

“Is that . . .” Sam began. “Is that . . . _Morse?”_

“Yeah. Bit of a rough day, all around. Let him borrow a pair of your old pajamas. Didn’t think you’d mind.”

“No,” Sam said. “Fine by me. But … where’s he been? What’s he been doing all this time?”

“I dunno, son,” Thursday said.

He didn’t really want to say more at the moment; he wasn’t too keen on the idea of Morse waking and hearing himself being discussed in the third person.

And, anyway, it wasn’t a lie. Not really. 

Morse, once he had his head on straight, might well answer the same.

“I dunno if he knows, either,” Thursday said.

Sam nodded thoughtfully. 

“Well,” Sam said, then. “I’m off to bed. You coming up?”

“Might just kip here a while, I reckon.”

Sam nodded again, as if he knew just what he meant. As if he knew that he was keeping an eye on Morse without letting him know, precisely, that he was keeping an eye on him.

“'K, then. Night, Dad.”

“Night, Sam.”

As Sam turned to head up the stairs, Thursday rose from the couch and stretched. Might as well let Morse have the whole thing, seeing as he was well on his way to taking it over anyway. As for himself, he could take a kip for the few hours before dawn in his chair. Wasn’t as if he hadn’t slept in more uncomfortable places.

He bent over to take hold of Morse’s ankles, pulling them over the remaining space on the couch, straightening him out a bit, and, as he did, he felt the bullet shift under his ribs—leaving an odd sort of strangled feeling somewhere deep in his chest.

He needed to clear his throat. That was all, most likely.

Thursday made his way into the darkened kitchen and turned on the small light over the sink, casting the hushed space into an eerie glow. Then he reached to get a glass out of the cabinet. And then another. A glass of water wouldn’t do Morse any harm, either, when he woke. Flush some of the accumulated alcohol out of his system.

He padded back to the den and set one of the glasses down on the coffee table with a gentle clunk, and Morse—despite having slept through his and Sam’s conversation—stirred, blinking before him.

Then he sat up with a jolt. Obviously, he, too, had forgotten where he was, just as Thursday had.

“You’re alright, Morse.”

Morse sat for a minute, his hair rumpled, scowling somewhere into the corner of the shadowed room.

“I fell asleep.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“No need to apologize. Brought you some water,” Thursday said with a nod to the glass on the table, before settling down in his armchair and polishing off most of his own glass in nearly one go.

A long silence fell between them, then, as they sat in the semidarkness. For one brief moment, it looked as if Morse was about to speak—Thursday could see the thoughts gathering in his eyes, the new tension tighten across his face as he opened his mouth . . .

. . . And then promptly snapped it shut again.

In the meanwhile, Thursday found himself leaning forwards in his chair, as if to catch any murmured words that might fall, almost holding his breath.

He realized, then, all at once, that he _needed_ to hear it, whatever Morse had to say, as much as Morse needed to say it.

He relaxed back into his seat then, his hands resting lightly on the curved ends of the upholstered arms, realizing that, if he appeared too eager, he might very well send Morse back into retreat.

Although, maybe that was wrong, too.

Maybe Morse needed to know that—needed to know that he, Thursday, wanted to hear it. Needed to hear it. That he cared enough to want to know the story. That it wasn’t something Morse had to shove away somewhere, lest it render him unacceptable. Lest he think that the troubles that had followed him in the aftermath of Blenheim Vale and prison were proof positive that he was somehow not up to snuff. That he was, as Thursday had once told him, a poor policeman. 

So Thursday focused his gaze, watching him expectantly, half-fearing that Morse might turn away.

But he didn’t. Nearly as soon as Morse’s eyes met his, his mouth fell open once more, as if to speak.

“The first week I hardly slept at all,” he said.

Morse scanned his face, then, cautiously, as though gauging his reaction before continuing on.

Truth of it was, Thursday was surprised that he should launch right into it so, but, on the other hand, wasn’t as if he needed much clarification as to what he meant by ‘the first week,’ did he?

And so, he was careful to keep his face neutral, lest any move on his part halt this new flow of information.

“Kept thinking I’d be found hanging from the top of the bars, or take a dive from the top walk,” he said, a brief and apologetic smile quirking at the corner of his mouth.

Then his face grew grave.

“I kept expecting to hear boots on the landing. A key in the door. But no one ever came.”

There was a slight rise there on the final sentence, one that sent that lump in Thursday’s chest aching again, sharper than it had before. It was as if Morse were posing a question, wonderingly. A silent question that Thursday heard all too clear. 

_But no one ever came._

_Why did no one ever come?_

Had no one visited, then? No one at all? Thursday had never asked, afraid to know the answer.

But how could they, really? Wouldn’t be doing him any favors, if word got round that all his visitors were coppers, would it?

“A month,” he said.

Although maybe it would have done Morse some good, despite the risk to it.

Thursday said nothing. He was tempted, sorely tempted, to rush in with assurances, with apologies, with explanations, but, somehow, he managed to hold his peace. Morse had enough people, he supposed, telling him how he was supposed to feel about it all.

Best let the lad just say it. Let him be angry if he was angry. 

“I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. That was the worst of it.”

Thursday heaved a sigh at that.

Goddamn it.

Had no one bothered to send him a message at all? They could have been discreet about it.

“No. The worst part . . . the worst, was knowing it was my fault. I was too slow. My . . . _stupidity_ almost made Mrs. Thursday a widow.”

And there, Thursday had to speak. There was a thought that Morse needed to be disabused of right now.

“It wasn’t your fault, Morse. If the fault lay anywhere, it was with me. I should have sent you home that night. I knew there was no calvary coming. I’m your governor. My job to look after you, not the other way around.”

But Morse looked slightly mutinous at that, leaving Thursday to feel as if he had taken a wrong step through a minefield.

Morse was Morse, after all. The world was black and white and right and wrong, and how could Thursday even think he would do such a thing, as let the Masons scare him off? Bully him into not standing up for the truth?

Better, far better, to throw himself in the face of it, and live with the aftermath, than to live with not having acted at all.

Whereas, in the meanwhile, the rest of the nick seemed to be tearing themselves up for having taken the opposite route.

It was like just one more layer of Morse’s blasted Dante’s Inferno that they should all be twisting themselves into knots, ever more painful, ever more irreversible, over that hellish night.

He and Morse and Jakes and Mr. Bright and even Jim Strange—it had been eating away at them, at all of them. And it was none of their faults, really. The fault lay solely with the men who had put such a horrific cycle of events into play in the first place.

Well. Better to leave off with looking for who was to blame.

Better to put it as simply and as honestly as he could. 

“I knew what I was getting into when I went out there. Something bad like that?” Thursday said.

And Morse looked up at him, his blue eyes sharp in the dim room.

“Sometimes, you have to put all you are against all they’ve got. You could have left, that night.”

“But you didn’t. You stood your ground.”

“And I won’t forget it.” 

Morse smiled then, a fleeting, lopsided thing, and looked away, put a hand to the back of his head as if to scrub up the waves there, but instead he simply rested it there for a moment, as if he lacked the energy even for that little idiosyncratic gesture.

For a long while, they were silent. But that was all right. It was quiet there, in the semi-darkness. It was as if, in the first time in months, Thursday could breathe again.

He leaned back in his chair, rolling his glass of water meditatively in his hand, and drank down the last of the water. 

And.

There.

The pain shot through the center of his chest blood-hot, like someone had run him through with an iron poker, and the world disappeared, his vision fading out at the edges around him.

He couldn’t breathe, but he could cough; he could do nothing but cough—cough so that it felt he might hack a lung out.

Vaguely, he worried about turning his family’s home into something resembling a crime scene, vomiting blood all over the carpet, about how he should hate to leave signs of such a thing for Win to stumble upon when she came home.

He would want her to believe that he went quickly, gently.

Somehow, he made his way out of his chair. If only he could at least make it to the bath . . . He could. Of course, he could. He would have to.

If this was to be it, he was glad it was now—not only had he made his fragile peace with Morse, but, if the worst were to happen, Morse would be here for Sam and then for Joan and Win.

He would help them through the next few days, and—if Morse still insisted on blaming himself—they would be of help to him, by allowing him to make it up to his old governor by looking out for his wife and kids.

Even as Thursday’s chest was wracked with pain, some dim corner of his mind remained rational, wishing he could clear his lungs enough to get out at least six final words.

_Look after them for me, Morse._

His vision had gone completely dark before his waking eyes, but somehow he must have managed to stumble upstairs, following only his own sense memory of the house, because the next thing he knew, he was bent over the white sink in the bath, looking into the basin, where a bullet lay glinting gold in a red pool of blood.

He could scarcely believe it. There it was, the thing he had caused him so much pain. Hardly any larger than his thumb, really.

So small a thing, really, and yet it had nearly felled him.

He stepped away, trying to recover his breathing, when, suddenly, he felt it: that unmistakable sense of being watched.

He raised his gaze to see Sam and Morse, like twin sentinels on either side of the threshold, each the opposite of the other—one coltish with unkempt reddish hair and wide blue eyes, the other compact and neat and trim with shocked and rounded brown ones, each posed in an identical posture, with one hand holding onto the doorframe, as if to give them steady purchase, as if they needed something to hold onto to keep them upright, as they had watched what could only be the grisliest of scenes. 

Thursday picked the bullet up out from the bottom of the sink, clearing his throat.

“Well, what do you know?” he managed, although his voice was weak. “I guess the old man’s got a few years left in him after all.”

Sam shook his head.

“Dad,” he said, by way of reprimand.

“Don’t make jokes, sir,” Morse said, a little breathlessly, as if he had coughed the thing up himself.

“Sorry, Morse. Hard to know what else to do at a time like this.”

Sam rolled his eyes, even as he rolled himself out of the doorway. The relief he felt was clear in his hitch of his shoulders, in the brightness of his eyes, and in the easy way he turned away, but he was his father’s son in that regard.

“You’re timing’s perfect, anyway,” Sam said. “Glad mum and Joan weren’t here for that show.”

“Mmmmm,” Thursday agreed. 

Morse smiled as if he thought the both of them a bit mad—or at least it was an attempt at a smile, a daffy little thing, something like the flicker of a clumsy nestling fluttering uncertainly to the ground.

*****

Thursday puttered about in the kitchen, getting together some eggs on toast, rubbing occasionally at his neck to try to relieve the deep crick in it from where he had fallen asleep on the couch.

It was a simple enough meal, but somehow it seemed to take him three times as long and twice the amount of dirty dishes as it did Win when she whipped up such a breakfast.

But she always made things look so easy. As glad as he was that she was not at home to witness the events of last night, he wished she were home now. Win, he was sure, would have a better idea as to how to proceed with Morse. She just seemed to have a better knack with people than he did, a trait or skill she’d passed on to Joan and Sam. 

He got out three plates from the cupboard and set them on the counter, and then he went into the den, where Morse was sprawled out on the couch, dead asleep, even though the morning sun was reaching long beams through the lace curtains, shining full blast in his face.

“Morse,” he said. “Morse.”

Thursday came and stood right over him, but still, Morse’s head remained burrowed sideways against the pillow, his eyes softly closed, his lashes russet in the white morning light.

“Morse.”

Finally, Morse woke with a jolt and sat up, blinking at him in confusion, as if he had once again forgotten where he was.

“Breakfast,” Thursday said, succinctly.

Morse blinked and nodded, rubbing blearily at his eyes, as Thursday hustled back to the kitchen, altered by the scent of smoke in the air.

In another minute, Morse followed, stumbling into the smoky room as if to see what was the matter, just as Sam was coming down the stairs, taking them two at a time, almost galloping, from the sound of him. 

“Smells good, Dad,” Sam said. He snapped up a dish towel and beat at the air with it in order to dissipate the smoke, while Thursday fussed with the fickle toaster, and Morse revolved in small circles as if wanting to help, but not sure how to go about it. 

“All right,” Thursday said. “That’s enough out of you. You two get out of here and let a man work. There’s not room in here for three.” 

Sam threaded the towel back through the holder by the sink.

“All right, then,” he said. “As long as you’ve got things under control.”

“Hmmmmm,” Thursday said.

Morse hovered for a moment and then followed Sam into the dining room. Although—to be fair—Morse’s uncertainty may very well have been fueled by a sense of self-consciousness, as he and Sam were dressed for the day and he was still in Sam’s old pajamas. 

Thursday set the plates on the table and settled into his chair, as Sam dove into his eggs right off. 

“I’m running late for work,” Sam said. 

“On a Saturday?” Thursday asked. 

“It’s Saturday?” Morse asked.

“Inventory,” Sam said.

“Hmmmm,” Thursday said. “I’ve got to go in, too for a bit. The nick’s been in a right state this week as it is, without would-be celebrities pulling attention-seeking stunts, I can tell you that.”

Morse’s ears pricked up at that, as if he was trying to puzzle out his meaning. But the less Morse knew about all that, the better. Which reminded him . . .

“Oh. Morse. I threw your shirt and trousers into the wash. Smelled like vomit, the whole lot of it.”

It was the wrong time to point that out. Morse had just begun to take a tentative bite of toast and turned promptly green.

Then, another thought seemed to dawn upon him, lighting across his face.

“But …” Morse asked, “but what am I supposed to do, then?”

“You can take a kip, that’s what. And wait for me to get home. You’re well out of this Morse, all of it. Best for us all around if it stays that way. Left the crossword for you in the den, by the way.”

Thursday would take the rest of the day’s newspaper with him into the nick—had already tucked it inside his coat. And Morse could be trusted, he thought, not to turn on the telly, especially with all of the football running around the clock.

Between Lady Georgina and Mrs. Pettybon’s crusade against Nick Wilding, the press was having a field day. Morse didn’t need to see any of it, as far as Thursday was concerned. As far as Thursday was concerned, Morse could just take one day and cool off from it all, keep himself, for once, behind the ruddy hall stand.

He thought Morse might look mutinous at being told to stay at home in his jim jams, but he must have still been feeling worn thin. Because, instead, he took a bite of toast, seeming to accept his words, uncharacteristically subdued. 

The doorbell rang right as Sam was taking a gulp of tea.

“I’ll get that. Gotta run, Dad. See you, Morse,” he said, and headed out for the door.

In a moment, he could hear Sam and Jakes exchanging greetings in the hall.

A flicker of shock twitched across Morse’s features, then; he was absolutely mortified, no doubt, at being caught out looking so sleep-rumpled and tousled-haired, dressed in a pair of too-small pajamas, by his sharply-turned-out onetime rival.

“Morse,” Jakes said, nodding a head of perfectly slicked-back hair towards him as he sauntered into the room—just as if it were the most natural thing in the world, just as if Morse was sitting at his desk in the nick, clicking a pen by his ear, rather than at a breakfast table, toying with his eggs. 

Morse said nothing, pretending instead to be suddenly engrossed in the contents of his plate.

“I’ll be just a few hours," Thursday said.

“Mmmmm,” Morse said.

“I’ll swing by the lake house, when I’m done. Pick up some of your things.”

Morse’s head snapped up at that, more quickly than Thursday would have thought possible. 

_“No!”_

Thursday startled. It was the first word out of his mouth since his arrest yesterday afternoon that had come out with any force behind it, the first thing he’d said to ring any louder than a murmur.

_Now_ what was the matter?

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it—all transpiring so fast that anyone not attuned to catching such exchanges might have lost the thread of it entirely—Jakes cutting Morse a quick, sharp look, even as Morse immediately ducked his head, making a study once more of his plate. 

Thursday might not know what Morse was on about, but Jakes—Jakes most assuredly did. 

“I mean. You’ve already been through so much trouble,” Morse amended.

“Morse is right, sir,” Jakes said. “You’ll be busy taking that letter out to Mrs. Pettybon’s, won’t you? I have to go out that way anyway, take a few final statements. I can take care of it.” 

Jakes said the words rather pointedly, as if he was telling Morse rather than asking him, and Morse looked decidedly uneasy. Whatever the hell it was between them this time, it was clear that Morse was in the wrong.

“Well,” Thursday said, at last. “Alright, then. I’ll just take these plates into the kitchen before I go. And you take yours, too, when you’re done, Morse, alright? Can’t give Win the satisfaction of seeing how I’ve let things go.”

“Sir.”

Then he made a theatrical show of leaving the room. Whatever the two of them had to say, they best say it and get it out, settle whatever it was once and for all between them. If not for their own sakes, then for the sake of his own blood pressure. 

And if he happened to overhear a snatch or two, well.... He couldn’t help it if his hearing was as sharp as a tack.

Turned out, it wasn’t all that difficult. Jakes was so tetchy, he barely bothered to keep his voice down.

“I told you to get rid of all that …” Jakes said.

“I .... ”

“I put my arse on the line for you there, Morse. They could have my badge for that, you do know that, don’t you?”

Morse murmured something then, that Thursday couldn’t hear.

“Well. I’m going out there, then. I’m searching your dumpy little den till I find them, and then I’m dropping them in the fire.”

“No!” Morse said. 

Another silence followed then, as Thursday moved back toward the door. 

“Please,” Morse said. “Just let me do it. I will. It just . . . It just slipped my mind.”

“Well see that it _unslips_ it. And don’t think of keeping any as some little souvenir, either. If you won’t do it for your own sake, then do it for his. You won’t be doing him any favors, either, you know, if those things get found. You don’t think they’re raking him over the coals, in the press, as it is?” 

“Why? What are they saying?”

“Never you mind. Just get it done, Morse. Unlike you, I can't afford to be out of a job.”

Christ.

What was this all about, then?

Nothing to do with Blenheim Vale, evidently, but something altogether new, something that could only be the cause of Morse’s rather hasty departure from Maplewick Hall after the arrest of Emma Carr.

Thursday turned back and set the dishes in the sink with a deliberate clatter of china and silverware, and then cleared his throat loudly, alerting them to him immanent return.

Immediately, the both of them clammed up, their expressions utterly inscrutable.

“Sergeant?” he said, returning to the dining room. “Ready for the off?”

“Sir.”

“I’ll be back in a few hours? Alright? Morse?”

“Sir.”

And then, without further comment, he led Jakes to the door.

If Jakes could let whatever it was go, he could to, he supposed.

Although, this time, not for Morse’s sake.

Thursday was under no illusions as to what it must have cost his sergeant to fly in the face of protocol.

****

As Thursday came in through the front door, back from the nick, he could tell at once that Morse was still there—not so much by the low rumble of the television set as by that indefinable sense of life thrumming through the house; the place was quiet, but not deserted. 

He walked into the den, and, sure enough, Morse was there on the couch, his expression blank, the deadest thing alive to a stir with a ghost of breath, as he sat watching the television screen.

Thursday followed his gaze, even though he already knew from the familiar, shrill voice emanating from the telly what he would see when he looked there. 

And, indeed, it was Mrs. Pettybon, in her oversized coat and pillbox hat, beaming in her full glory as she carried on her latest campaign, which seemed to revolve around tearing Nick Wilding up a good one—the wages of sin are death, and so on and so forth. 

It must have been taped from earlier that day. Clearly, the station hadn’t gotten wind of the latest, then.

Thursday went over and snapped off the set, but Morse kept his eyes on the empty screen, giving no indication he noticed, one way or the other. 

“You know,” he said, at last. “If it was she who had . . .”

He let the sentence drop, then. Because what was the term that fit there? Nick Wilding wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t amongst the living, either.

“If she . . .” Morse began again. “ . . . he would have been sorry for her. Sorry that she had died so bitter, so unhappy.” 

“Mmmmmm,” Thursday said. 

“She has a daughter, you know,” Morse said. “It’s not as if she’s all alone. He told me once. He saw her when he and Mrs. Pettybon got thrown on some show together.” 

“Yes,” Thursday said. “I’ve met her. Had some dealings with her about a case.” 

“He said she would love her if she’d let her. Her daughter. But that she treats her worse than anyone.” 

“Well,” Thursday said. “I don’t think you need to worry about her daughter. They had a falling out. The girl told her off and then tore out of there.” 

Morse looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, a bit enigmatically, “I hope she didn’t take all that with her.” 

“I don’t think she took all that much with her, to be honest,” Thursday said. 

“But where will she go?” he asked. 

Now that Thursday thought about it, he wasn’t quite sure.

But before he could begin to form an answer, there was a ring at the door.

Thursday crossed the room, leaving Morse as he was, and padded back down the hallway towards the door. He opened it to find Jakes, with a suitcase and brown paper bag in hand, standing on the stoop.

“Just brought some things by for Morse,” he said. “Reckon if he gets dressed he’ll start knowing if it’s morning, noon, or night.” 

“Sergeant,” Thursday said, opening the door wider, allowing him through. 

Jakes went on down the hall to where Morse, more alert to the sound of the bell this time, was already standing in the doorway of the den. 

“Brought you some things,” Jakes said, passing a suitcase off to Morse. 

“Thanks,” Morse said.

Then he shoved a paper bag at him. 

“Brought you some of these, too. Records. Wasn’t going to drag the whole bloody lot of them over here, but I thought you’d like a few.”

Morse looked into the bag, and a faint but dawning light of happiness spread across his face.

“Thank you,” he said, clearly surprised by the gesture. “That was thoughtful of you.” 

He still couldn’t quite seem to modulate his tone, Morse. The words came out a little too strangled, a little too raw, with a little too much heartfelt gratitude—so much so that Jakes was left to fold his arms, fidgeting with discomfort. 

“Yeah. Well,” Jakes said. “See you, Morse.”

Jakes looked to him, then.

“Sir,” he said, with a curt nod, and then started off back down the hall. 

“See you,” Morse called.

But Thursday was already well on his way towards seeing him out the door.

When he returned to Morse, he was back to gazing fondly into the bag, seemingly dazed with the shock of having his records unexpectedly restored to him. 

“You can put one of those on if you like,” Thursday said. “I’ll see about tea. I think there’s a shepherd’s pie in the fridge somewhere.” 

And then the light in Morse’s face dissolved again, clouding over with anxiety. 

“I can’t pay you back, you know,” Morse said. “I mean. I don’t really have any money.” 

The jest was there, right on the tip of his tongue. _“I sort of figured that, seeing as you haven’t worked for months.”_

But the words died away before he could say them, because there was something there that irked him no end.

Was this truly how Morse saw the world?

Did he feel he owed someone something for every small kindness? 

“That’s all right, Morse,” Thursday said. “You’re doing us a favor, me and Sam. Win left us enough to feed any army. She’ll be right pleased to see you’re here to help us put a dent in it. She’ll fret if she thinks we haven’t been keeping up regular mealtimes.”

“She’s coming back tomorrow, then? Mrs. Thursday?”

“Yeah. Twelve o’clock train. Be good to see her.”

“It must be odd, having her gone. You’ve been together so long,” Morse said. “You . . . you must miss her.”

“Longest six days of my life,” Thursday agreed. 

Morse quirked a soft smile.

“And on the seventh, he rested,” he said.

****

In the morning, when Thursday came down the stairs, he found that Morse was still sprawled out on the sofa, out for the count. The turntable was on, with one of the records Jakes had brought him spinning silently, the needle hugging the label as it revolved.

Thursday walked over to the player and shut it off, noting the volume was on the second lowest notch. He must have fallen asleep, then, listening to the thing.

Who knew how long he had stayed up, listening to his records? It must have been half the night, because he was still asleep come eleven, by the time Thursday was set to go and fetch Win.

Sam had run out that morning, to meet up with friends, and Thursday knew there was a chance that Morse might leave, with the house once more deserted.

But what could he do?

He couldn’t stand over him all the day long, like a jailor.

He’d just have to trust the lad to himself.

Morse was alright.

That’s what he told himself, anyway. 

But it didn’t stop him from feeling disappointed, saddened even, when he and Win returned home, and he found that Morse had gone. 

****

Bixby’s stone manor house was utterly deserted, the vast and cavernous rooms ringing with a silence that was almost palpable. The place smelled of solemnity and cleaning wax, and all of the furniture had been covered in white dust cloths, so that the place felt like it was full of ghosts, sedate and utterly motionless in the fading evening light.

In one darkened room, Thursday happened upon a sofa placed before a large white movie screen. On a nearby table, a projector had been set up, along with a camera, left behind, perhaps, by a one-time party guest.

Curious, Thursday flipped a switch on the side of the machine, and the projector started up with a low series of clicks before the wheels began to spin in earnest, casting flickering black-and-white images onto the screen.

The film contained footage of a party, one of the to-dos held right here in this very house. It was odd, seeing it thus, full of life and movement, when now all lay so still. They were the same rooms, but they might as well be a moon’s distance away, divided as they were by time and by a creeping sense of abandonment.

The camera panned the crowd, ran in front of one of the gilt mirrors, and—Christ—it was Lady Georgina, holding the thing.

Thursday stood up straighter, wondering what might be revealed.

He watched as the glitter of the night was reduced into a flash of succeeding black-and-white frames, as the lens swept across a room of dancers, as it panned across men and women who waved and winked at the camera as it circled by.

Then, the camera seemed to glide on, into another room, where a woman stood singing on a rounded stage, with an orchestra before her. The perspective swooped amongst the tables, then, focusing in on guest after guest, and then, something in Thursday’s chest swooped with it.

There was Morse, sitting in his evening suit, clearly engrossed in the music, seemingly oblivious to all else, almost dazed with an unexpected happiness.

But then, music always was Morse’s best answer, his balm for keeping the darkness at bay.

Suddenly, Thursday was far away, off on a rooftop, the twilight bathing the white domes and spires of Oxford in a softening rose glow.

 _“Go home. Put your best record on. Loud as it will play,”_ Thursday had told him.

Morse would be all right. As long as he remembered that …

Then the camera’s lens pulled back, widening the shot, and there, in the chair beside Morse, was Joss Bixby, looking altogether satisfied with himself, as if he had pulled a white rabbit out of a top hat, as if all was going right with his world.

Then, in the next moment, Harry Rose came and tapped Bixby’s shoulder. Bixby turned, a flash of annoyance contorting his face. They seemed to argue for a moment, and then Bixby rose, and went with him, leaving Morse to his opera.

Perhaps Bixby, then, had his own reasons for wanting to clear out of Oxford?

Thursday scowled darkly at the images as they continued to flicker in the darkness. What was Morse getting into?

But there was nothing else for it.

He would have to trust Morse, he supposed. Hope that there might be more music than misadventure in his future.

_“And on the seventh, he rested,”_ Morse had said, a little wistfully in hindsight.

Thursday flipped the camera off, and the light from the projector died, and the room went black.

“Mind how you go,” he said to the empty screen.

And then he picked up his hat, and, slowly, walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

***** 

Morse stood on the edge of the ferry, his hands resting lightly on the railing, watching the white cliffs streaked with chalk as they moved steadily away from him.

And, suddenly, he was filled with the ache of regret.

Perhaps, even, of homesickness?

What was he doing? Perhaps he didn’t want to leave England, to leave Oxford, after all. Perhaps, despite all evidence the contrary, he _did_ belong there, in the city he knew so well.

For one irrational moment, he was tempted to fly over the railing and drop into the choppy water of the channel below, to start swimming for the growingly distant shore.

He chanced a glance up to where Bixby was standing beside him, half-wondering if he might see his own doubt, his own-second thoughts, echoed there in his face. Perhaps, once they got to France, they might get on the next ferry? Turn right back around?

But Bix, as ever, was smiling, squinting a little in the sun, clearly enjoying the feel of the wind, radiant with a happiness that made Morse feel all more uncertain.

Bix seemed almost to glow with a childlike excitement, as if this was all in good fun, as if they were heading off together on some grand new adventure.

But, as for Morse, he wasn’t so sure.

What was he heading to? A fresh start, a new path, gleaming and untouched, far from the dreaming spires of Oxford that had so ghosted through his days?

Or was he simply on his way to his next poorly-thought out disaster?

And what was he leaving behind? And whom?

Because they were all there, weren't they? There, somewhere beyond the shore that he was leaving behind meter by meter, moment by moment, without even so much as one goodbye.

Somewhere across the water, the Thursdays were back at home, back together, sitting down to a cup of tea. Somewhere, Jakes was lighting up a cigarette, flipping through some paperwork, finishing up yet another day on the job. Somewhere Strange was stopping in at the Lamb and Flag, and he, Morse, still owed him a pint.

Or two.

Or three.

Somewhere Kay was out for a walk, wondering if it was worth it, all of the compromises she had made. And Tony was pouring a drink or driving along in Bluebell, humming a tune to himself as he always did. And George might be sitting in a darkened cell downstairs, back at the nick, wondering what would happen to her. And what _would_ happen to her? She could just as easily have kept going, have let him take her place....

And, upstairs, Mr. Bright was sealing up his file, shoving it into the back of a filing cabinet. With regret? Happy to be well shot of him? Morse wasn’t sure of that, either. The man had saved his life, just as surely as Georgina had, and yet he had barely said a word to him in the aftermath. 

Somewhere Monica was heading home from work, riding along on her little blue moped. Or perhaps she was standing, lovely and prim in her cap, taking someone’s pulse. Did she think of him ever? Did she remember him with fondness? In anger? Did she know that it was because he had loved her that he had left her? 

Somewhere Nick might be waking up in a hospital bed, blinking under the unforgiving lights, wondering how he had ended up there. Perhaps wondering where he had gone. And all Morse could ever do for him was to burn the memory of them to ashes in the stone ring before the lake house door.

Suddenly, Morse became aware that Bixby was watching him, carefully—so carefully it made his heart ache to see it. It was painful, almost, to look at him, so transparently grateful was he that he had come along with him.

There is nothing so dangerous to a man as the assumption that he knows how to wear a mask.

When, actually ....

He doesn’t.

“All right? Morse?” Bixby asked.

And, much to Morse’s surprise, perhaps he was. He would miss them all, even though he had realized it only too late. 

But they would all be fine without him. They didn’t need him. Not really. 

Whereas Bixby, on the other hand—Bixby was like a peacock in a tiger’s cage.

Bixby most assuredly did.

“Yes,” Morse said. “Yes, of course.”

Bixby smiled and placed one broad hand over his. Morse thought he might give it only a business-like pat, considering how they were standing amidst the crowds, watching the ever-more distant shore of England as it drifted away from them. But then Bix folded his fingers over top of his, curving them in a gesture meant to comfort as much as to give himself the reassurance that Morse was there, that he wasn’t planning to jump overboard, that he wasn’t planning to leave him, after all. 

For a moment, they simply stood there, shoulder to shoulder, Bixby’s hand resting lightly over his own, and then—since he realized there was no one who could see their joined hands held thus between them—Morse turned his hand so that his palm met Bix’s and then twined his fingers through his.

And he found that Bixby’s hand was far warmer, far more solid in his, than he would have imagined.

It was the most tangible thing that he had collided with on his wayward path ever since the day that he had sat on the shore of Lake Silence, dizzy with the horror of stumbling across a log that was not a log, reluctantly taking a bite of Thursday’s cheese and pickle sandwich—which had been smooth and tangy and sweet and something else, something undefinable, something akin to love. 

But what surprised Morse even more was how solid his own hand felt inside of Bixby’s. It was as if Bixby had stepped out of a swirl of smoke and mirrors and diffused red party lights hoping to grasp onto something real and had found it at last, right where he had least expected it, right when, perhaps, he had given up on finding it. 

Perhaps Morse _wasn’t_ a ghost of his former self at all, but rather something solid, someone to give anchor, maybe even ...

And then Bixby, still looking over the water, smiled a Sphinx-like smile and tightened his grasp.

. . . maybe he was something worth holding onto, after all.

******

Thursday told himself he wouldn’t do it.

But at the end of November, when a case came up in which he had to call in for a phone record anyway, it was just too easy, too tempting to give his own number as well. To find out one way or the other.

His eyes ran down the column of incoming calls to his home and then it popped out at him, the unfamiliar number.

It was a call received on the third of September. 12:14. An incoming call from an exchange out at Lake Silence.

2 minutes 46 seconds.

Thursday looked at the last figure for a long while, puzzling out what to make of it.

Was it a good sign that Morse needed so little convincing, that he was that certain?

Or was it only proof positive that the same impulsiveness that had driven him all summer was driving him on still?

Thursday tossed the paper down onto his desk and took up his pipe.

In the end he was sorry. Sorry he even looked.

Just as he knew he would be.

****

On an evening a few days before Christmas, Thursday came in through the front door, his hat and coat blanketed with a dusting of snow, to find Sam, standing in the hallway, reading a letter.

Thursday frowned.

Sam’s friends weren’t exactly a letter-writing lot.

Sam must have seen the question there in his face, because, silently, he handed him the letter—and, oddly enough, fifty pounds.

Thursday held the letter at arm’s length, his eyes tired from the long day, and began to read, his heart quickening at the familiar handwriting.

_Dear Sam,_

_I am writing to you because I was hoping to find a way, in part, to repay your father for the generosity that he showed to me last September._

_To my lasting regret, we parted on poor terms. The fault was mine entirely. He’s ever been the best and wisest of men and a better friend to me than I could have wished for or deserved._

_I’m sorry to presume upon on you, but I’ve burnt all of my bridges, and you were the only person I could think of who might extend to me the benefit of the doubt. As you will have no doubt heard by now, I’ve made an appalling mess of things. Much of it I can’t put right, but I would be remiss if I did not at least once extend my heartfelt gratitude._

_My best wishes to you and to your family._

_Happy Christmas._

_Morse._

For the first moment, his heart glowed with pride at Morse’s words.

Then, he felt angry all over again.

What did he mean by sending him fifty pounds? What? Was he some sort of innkeeper?

But that was Morse all over for you. Proud as a cat.

Not to mention infuriatingly inscrutable.

 _Burned his bridges?_ What did that mean, then? Did that mean he wanted to come back, but felt that he couldn’t?

Did he _still_ not know he could always come back, if he wanted?

Why did he have to write at all, if not to set his mind at rest? Or is that just what Morse thought he was doing? If so, he had certainly done a poor job of it.

Thursday turned over the envelope, which was tucked behind the single sheet of paper Sam had handed him. The return address was a hotel in Venice: accommodations that were anonymous, transient, telling him absolutely nothing.

Morse had fifty pounds to spare, there was that. But perhaps that meant nothing, either. He was the sort to spend the last penny in his pocket, if only it meant to saving face.

In the end, Thursday crammed the letter in the back of the writing desk drawer, along with old sales slips and old bills meant for filing, out of sight, out of mind.

But he couldn’t quite forget about it. 

In the end, his anger faded, turned once more to a quiet but hesitant pride, and then, as more time passed, to a nostalgic fondness, beat to the thinness of gold foil.

_The wisest and best of men_ , Morse had said. 

That meant he must have done _something_ right by him. 

Didn’t it? 

***** October 1969 ****

*****Two Years Later ****

The row of five tall and arching windows—each fitted with a stained-glass circle in yellow and blue and green—bathed the dark walls of the Bodleian library with a weak autumnal light, a light as pure as the silence itself. 

It was difficult to imagine that, just the night before, the head librarian, Osbert Page, had been brutally murdered here, stabbed in the back with a wood chisel and left to die amongst the orderly stacks. 

“He lived for the library,” one of the assistant librarians, Miss Paroo, said, as she sat in a high-backed burgundy leather chair. “And his walking, of course. He was a keen rambler.”

“Did he get along well with the rest of his colleagues?” Thursday asked. 

“I suppose,” she said. “I’ve not been here long.”

“Who else was here?” Strange asked. 

“Only a couple of regulars.” 

“Where were they sitting?” Thursday asked.

The young woman rose and came around to the front of the desk. Then she stopped for a moment, looking over the readers’ desks, each fitted with a green-globed lamp, as if trying to recreate the scene in her mind.

Then she began to lead them in a wandering path amongst the desks.

“Dr. Nicholson was here. And Professor Burrowes over here,” she said, tracing her fingertips across each desk as she spoke. “And Professor Morse was right over here.”

Thursday raised his eyebrows, the name catching like a feather in his throat.

“Morse, did you say?” he asked. 

Strange gave him a look close to pitying, but he pretended not to notice. 

He knew things would never be as they were, had long since given up on the idea that Morse might return as his bagman. 

But Morse _belonged_ in Oxford. It only seemed right that he should come back, eventually.

Although, most likely, Strange was right. Most likely, the idle thought was only an old man’s fancy, a symptom of an old man’s regret. 

But it wasn’t completely impossible, either. Morse hadn’t been far from completing his degree when he was sent down. Why wouldn’t he perhaps return and pick it up again? What else had he, really, to fall back on? He’d already burned through three false starts, as it was.

“You wouldn’t happen to know his Christian name, would you Miss?” Thursday asked. “Professor Morse’s?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve never heard him called anything but Morse.” 

He could see the caution against hope in Strange’s firm expression. The fact that this Professor Morse did not seem to fling out his Christian name to all the world meant nothing, of course. Most of them went by their surnames only. 

“We’d like to speak to them,” Thursday said. “To all of them. See if they might have noticed anything unusual last night.”

“Of course,” Miss Paroo said. “The bursar’s office can direct you to their rooms, will have their home addresses on file if they’re not in, seeing as the Michaelmas term won’t begin until the seventeenth.”

“Thank you, Miss.” 

Strange eyed him, warily, as if he thought he might be in danger of getting diverted from the case in hand. It was a long shot, of course.

But seeing as they needed to speak to this Morse anyway ... 

What did it hurt to hope? Even if only for as long as it took to walk from the library to the bursar’s? 

When Thursday was handed the official file, he found that it said little enough. 

But it said enough. 

Professor Morse, it seemed, had filled out the contact information in his file using only his first initial. 

_E._

Surely that was telling? If his name were Edward or Edwin or Edgar, wouldn’t the man have simply disclosed that?

Strange frowned, as if beginning to concede that it just might be possible.

Thursday flipped the file open, forgetting all about the case, and looking only for confirmation. Morse’s full name, his birthdate—which Thursday knew to be in September of 1938—anything.

And then there it was.

Not what he thought it would be, but confirmation just the same.

A goddamn Lake Silence address. 

“Blimey,” Strange breathed, standing over his shoulder. “It’s Morse.”

*****

Thursday pulled along the curving drive, around the ostentatious fountain of leaping stone horses and bright rushing water, and put the Jag into park before Bixby’s front door.

It was the same old place, just as he remembered it. 

He strode up the steps and rang the bell, surprised when it was not a liveried servant who answered the door, but rather a man with feathered dark hair, dressed in a blue shirt, a brown suede jacket, and black trousers with the most ridiculous silver belt buckle Thursday had ever seen. 

It took him a moment to realize who he was, to realize that he none other than Bixby himself. Thursday had scarcely recognized him at first, never having seen him in anything other than an evening suit.

But Bixby recognized him plainly enough, that much was clear. The man’s face drained of all color nearly as soon as he opened the door. Things had been quiet enough out here, at Lake Silence, of late, quiet enough that it had been an age since he had been called out here, quiet enough that Thursday hadn’t even known that Bixby, let alone Morse, was back in the neighborhood, so he doubted there was much reason for the man to be alarmed. Unless it was just a case of old habits dying hard.

And it wasn’t as if they had parted on the best of terms, Thursday supposed.

“Inspector,” Bixby said, cautiously. 

“I’d like to speak to Morse,” he said. 

“Ah,” Bixby said. 

Thursday could see the calculation there in the dark eyes, could tell just what he was thinking.

Should he tell Morse that Thursday was here, or would Morse not take too kindly to having a surprise from his past popped on him right out of the blue?

Should he try to get rid of him so that he could give Morse some warning, ask him what he thought about it? Or should he try to get rid of him and never mention this visit to Morse at all?

Or could he make it even more simple for all involved, deny that Morse even lived there?

He could see it, too, the moment the Bixby made his decision A decision that was not a decision, but rather a resolution to leave it all to chance, to fate.

To roll the dice and let the chips fall where they may.

“Please, come in. I’ll have to see if he’s here,” he said.

_I’ll just bet,_ Thursday thought to himself.

If Morse were to be easily found about the sprawling place, Bixby would gather they were meant to speak.

If not, he’d send him away with some excuse, and that, with any luck—which was always on Bixby’s side, in his own estimation, no doubt—would be that.

Bixby opened the door wider, allowing Thursday to step into the Great Hall. It was as elaborate as ever, even as it had been toned down a notch or two—no balloons festooning the banister or grand floral displays that looked as if they’d been imported from the British West Indies.

As Bixby led him further into the house, presumably to search for Morse, Thursday stole a glance into the drawing room, and saw that it had been even more greatly altered.

The shining oak floors had been overlaid with a red and ivory and gold-toned Persian carpet, and amidst a cozy cluster of finely-carved and plush sofas, was a small maple table on which an old box record player stood, surrounded by a scatter of records on the floor.

Well. It didn’t take a detective inspector to gather that Morse was _somewhere_ about the place. Where there’s feathers, there’s a duck.

But the scene allowed Thursday to infer something else as well.

Perhaps, Morse wasn’t out of his depths, perhaps he _had_ managed to hold his own with this Bixby character, as polished and urbane as he seemed to be, after all. Perhaps there was even something to it, whatever the hell it was.

Bixby, even in his casual clothes, was always elegant and impeccable, without so much as a hair out of place.

Morse’s slovenly habits must drive the man absolutely out of his tree.  
  


He smiled to himself at the thought of it, when the sound of footsteps alerted him.

He turned round, and there he was: Morse, coming in from the opposite direction, filling through some papers he held in his hand.

“Ah,” Bixby said, as if the game was up. “Endeavour.” 

Morse’s mouth fell slightly open as he looked up at him, his eyes widening with surprise.

But despite his somewhat stunned expression, Morse looked alright. Maybe even better than alright. His hair was shorter, his face slightly fuller and his jawline slightly sharper, and he was turned out neatly enough, wearing a burgundy jumper, white dress shirt and matching burgundy tie, dressed as if for a quiet day at home.

Which, it seemed, was perhaps where he was. 

“Morse,” Thursday said. 

“Sir.” 

“Wondered if I might have a word,” Thursday said. 

Morse looked at him uncertainly, and then exchanged a fleeting glance with Bixby, as if to ask, _“This isn’t about you, is it?”_

And out of the corner of his eye he saw it—a shrug that was both chagrined and bemused, as if Bixby had said, _“I can't imagine it would be. But I just don't know, old man.”_

Thursday felt himself fuming with impatience with the both of them.

How they had made it along this far, God only knew. They each of them seemed to think they had something on the ball, were a bit savvier than the other, when the truth of it was they were as easily read as the top lines of an optometrist’s chart.

Not to mention the fact that it wasn’t exactly the warmest of welcomes, not what he would have expected after more than _two years._

Did Morse not remember how he had stolen away like a thief, without even leaving a damned note? 

Or perhaps it was because he remembered all too well. 

Why else should he stand there, shifting his weight from side to side, looking as sheepish as Sam had once looked when he got caught snatching a finger full of frosting off of one of Win’s cakes?

“Morse?” he said. “A word?”

Morse pulled on his ear and nodded, looking resigned. 

Not that Thursday could entirely blame him.

It wasn’t as if he had only one word, was it?

Oh, no. He had a whole barrel of them.

It was most likely the greatest understatement Morse had heard ever since Mr. Bright had said, _“Right-o. No harm done,”_ right after he had nearly been devoured by a tiger. 

“I . . . I left my books in the garden. Perhaps we might . . . talk outside?” Morse said. 

“Fine,” Thursday replied tersely.

******

He had thought it was a lie, perhaps, that Morse had told, in order that they might speak clear of the house, clear of Bixby. 

But, sure enough, after they had crossed some distance over the lawns, Morse led him to a garden swing overlooking the lake, whereupon lay a scattering of books and wayward papers.

Yes. Same old Morse. Just as sloppy as ever.

Morse picked the lot of it up, haphazardly gathering it all into an untidy stack, clearing room for the both of them to sit down.

Thursday was certain he’d have a hundred questions for Morse, if ever he saw him again, but now that he was here, standing beside him as he scuffled a collection of papers together, he found that they all seemed to dissolve, fade away, one by one. He found, as he stood once more beside him, that he didn’t need to, after all.

He didn’t need to ask him how he was, how he was doing. He had all the answers, right there before him—it was apparent in the ease with which he carried himself, with that slightly more filled-out build of a man in his thirties, and in the old, cautious austerity that was back in his eyes. He was alright, Morse. 

And he supposed that Morse found that he didn’t have to ask, either. Perhaps it was clear to him, too, in the way that Thursday regarded him, in the way he took his place beside him on the garden seat, just as easily as he had once sat beside him on a bench in front of the Radcliffe Camera, as they prepared to comb through the details of a case.

Time had passed, and it was all water under the bridge, however you worked it out; however it all fell into the scheme of things—of who owed the other the balance of forgiveness—it didn’t matter.

They were square, that was all.

And perhaps, at their core, where it really mattered, they always had been, all along. 

There are some people in life, with whom, once our paths collide, we are never quite the same, even when they leave us. People with whom, once our divergent paths cross again, it’s as if no time at all had passed in the meanwhile, and we fall into that same easy pace with them as if they had never left our sides.

And for Thursday, Endeavour Morse was one of them.

“Nice day,” Thursday said. 

“Yes.”

“Mind if I go ahead and take a fifteen for lunch? Nothing like a sandwich out-of-doors, is there?”

“Is that why you came all the way out here, sir?” asked Morse, bemused. “For a picturesque lunch break?”

“Course not,” Thursday said. “I was hoping to pick your brains a bit. It’s about a case. But there’s always time for a fifteen, Morse.”

Morse raised his eyebrows, clearly curious, and then he shrugged.

“All right with me, sir,” Morse said. 

Thursday relaxed further into the swing, stretching his legs out before him with satisfaction, and went to reach for his sandwich in his jacket pocket.

“Cheese and pickle,” Morse said.

Thursday startled, surprised that he would have remembered such a bit of minutia.

Although, it _was_ Morse. That’s what he was best at.

But Morse must have misunderstood Thursday’s expression.

“Unless that’s changed,” he added uncertainly.

“Are you joking?” Thursday said. “There are some things, Morse, that are as certain as the fixed motion of the stars.”

Morse smiled, this time a little more genuinely.

“Sir,” he said. 

And in that one syllable, he was sure if it: Morse understood.

They were all right. 

Thursday offered him a half of the sandwich, and Morse took it, much more readily than he might have imagined. For a while they ate in companionable silence, looking over the green lawns that sloped down to the black lake, where a red hydroplane tied to a dock bobbed in the choppy October waters.

At last, Thursday brushed the crumbs from his hands.

“I wanted to ask you about Osbert Page,” he said. 

“The head librarian? Why?” 

“He was found dead amongst the stacks this morning, with a wood chisel in his back.”

Morse paled for a moment, looking stunned, but then he recovered himself quickly enough.

“Miss Paroo said you were one of the readers there, at closing,” Thursday prompted.

“Yes,” Morse said. “I was there from about five o’clock until the warning bell.”

“Did you see anything unusual there, last night?” Thursday asked.

Morse frowned and looked back over the water, his gaze slightly unfocused as he sat, lost in thought, while Thursday balled up the scrap of wax paper and put it away in his pocket, waiting to hear what Morse might have to say.

Because he was sure he’d come up with something.

He might not be his bagman any longer, but he was still the same Morse who he had come to know so well, the same Morse who had never ceased to occupy some space in his mind and heart.

And Morse could always find something suspicious, even in a saint’s sock drawer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who followed this one to the end. <3<3
> 
> I feel that that ending was less of an ending in a way than an opening to a sequel... just as I have feared from the start it would be... hmmm.  
> I do have a few one-shot drafts from this verse--a Nick & Morse one and a Jakes & Morse one... and perhaps some Christmas fluff? I just don't know. I’m always open to suggestions, if there are any requests!  
> Thanks again :D


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